True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self- sacrifice; and the second, an external sign, his productions will be intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view.
In art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.
This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.
"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing - in which thou art unwilling to believe - is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it.
Not to admire, is all the art I know To make men happy, or to keep them so. Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago; And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach From his translation; but had none admired, Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?
I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music - his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting - that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.
The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.