It Is The Mark Of Great Art

Civilized People Can Talk About Anything. For Them No Subject Is Taboo.... In Civilized Societies There Will Be No Intellectual Bogeys At Sight Of Which Great Grownup Babies Are Expected To Hide Their Eyes.

There Must Be Some One Quality Without Which A Work Of Art Cannot Exist; Possessing Which, In The Least Degree, No Work Is Altogether Worthless.

Art And Religion Are, Then, Two Roads By Which Men Escape From Circumstance To Ecstasy. Between Aesthetic And Religious Rapture There Is A Family Alliance. Art And Religion Are Means To Similar States Of Mind.

Art And Relligion Are Not Professions: They Are Not Occupations For Which Men Can Be Paid. The Artist And The Saint Do What They Have To Do, Not To Make A Living, But In Obedience To Some Mysterious Necessity. They Do Not Product To Live - They Live To Produce.

It Is The Mark Of Great Art That Its Appeal Is Universal And Eternal.............. Great Art Remains Stable And Unobscure Because The Feelings That It Awakens Are Independent Of Time And Place, Because Its Kingdom Is Not Of This World. To Those Who Have And Hold A Sense Of The Significance Of Form What Does It Matter Whether The Forms That Move Them Were Created In Paris The Day Before Yesterday Or In Babylon Fifty Centuries Ago? The Forms Of Art Are Inexhaustible; But All Lead By The Same Road Of Aesthetic Emotion To The Same World Of Aesthetic Ecstasy.