People do things, and suffer martyrdom, because they have
an inclination that way. The best artist is not the man
who fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the
practice of his art. And instead of having a taste for
being successful merchants and retiring at thirty, some
people have a taste for high and what we call heroic forms
of excitement.
*
These are predestined; if a man love the labour of any
trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods
have called him.
*
The incommunicable thrill of things, that is the tuning-
fork by which we test the flatness of our art. Here it is
that Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs us up to
further effort and new failure.
*
To please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult
to instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one
thoroughly without the other.
*
We shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for they lie
too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious
history of man.
*
Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious contentment are of the
very essence of the better kind of art.
*
This is the particular crown and triumph of the artist--not
to be true merely, but to be lovable; not simply to
convince, but to enchant.
*
Life is hard enough for poor mortals, without having it
indefinitely embittered for them by bad art.
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