The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.

It is hard to believe long together that anything is "worth while," unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.

That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.

The poverty of our imagination is no measure of say the world's resources. Our posterity will no doubt get fuel in ways that we are unable to devise for them.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.