As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar.

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols.