In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded....He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.

It's either the wallpaper or me. One of us has to go. [These were his dying words.]

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

There's no sin but stupidity.