These are predestined; if a man love the labour of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
The incommunicable thrill of things, that is the tuning-fork by which we test the flatness of our art. Here it is that Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs us up to further effort and new failure.
To please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult to instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without the other.
We shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious history of man.
Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious contentment are of the very essence of the better kind of art.