Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.

No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece.

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.

Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.