e moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should
settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move
with a better grace and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The louts he
meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a
reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and
haughty.

People do things, and suffer martyrdom, because they have an inclination
that way. The best artist is not the man who fixes his eye on posterity,
but the one who loves the practice of his art. And instead of having a
taste for being successful merchants and retiring at thirty, some people
have a taste for high and what we call heroic forms of excitement.

*****

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.

*****

This is the particular crown and triumph of the artist--not to be true
merely, but to be lovable; not simply to convince, but to enchant.

*****

Life is hard enough for poor mortals, without having it indefinitely
embittered for them by bad art.

*****

So that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual.
Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader in
the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple,
charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice
through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even
a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly
silent; and he should recognise from the first that he has only one tool
in his workshop, and that tool is sympathy.

*****

Through no art beside the art of words can the kindness of a man's
affections be expressed. In the cuts you shall find faithfully paraded
the quaintness and the power,