The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy.

I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.

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.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.

We all agree now - by "we" I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.