There is no expedient to ...

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
 Joshua Reynolds

More phrases

Being self-made is a state of mind, and once you put that mentality to work, your success will come.
 Dave East
A lot of people change for good. Some people just fall off. Just trying to progress in anything, no matter what you're doing, I feel like any progression you make... some people aren't gonna be around you that were around you.
 Dave East
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
Don't settle in the land of barely enough. That is where you are, it is not who you are. That's your location, it's not your identity. No matter what it looks like, have an abundant mentality.
Everything in your life, every experience, every relationship is a mirror of the mental pattern that is going on inside of you.

Quotes from the same author

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
 Joshua Reynolds
Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.
 Joshua Reynolds
The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose
 Joshua Reynolds
I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations, that do but perplex and puzzle the Student, when he compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their authority; but bringing them under one general head, can alone give rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.
 Joshua Reynolds
I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, 'that it only put them out.
 Joshua Reynolds