Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.

Shakespeare is, essentially, the emanation of the Renaissance. The overflow of his fame on the Continent in later years was but the sequel of the flood of the Renaissance in Western Europe. He was the child of that great movement, and marks its height as it penetrated the North with civilization.

To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.

You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman.

The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?