Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Quote

Our task is not to invent but to continue, and we have enough to do if, following the examples of the masters, we utilize those innumerable types which nature constantly offers to us, if we interpret them with wholehearted sincerity and ennoble them through that pure and firm style without which no work has beauty.

As quoted in: Artists on Art, from the XIV to the XX Century (Pantheon books, 1947), p. 216