It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master

Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean - Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)