The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.

It would follow that 'significant form' was form behind which we catch a sense of ultimate reality.

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art.

Do not mistake a crowd of big wage earners for the leisure class.

Art and religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstacy.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.