Be slow to fall into friendship but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. – Socrates

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist. – Edgar Allan Poe

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty. – Alfred de Vigny

…a bourgeois barrenness… depressingly alien from that dainty boudoir atmosphere of the artist-life she knew. – Israel Zangwill, Dreamers of the Ghetto, “From a Mattress Grave,” 1897