Such Discussions Help Us Very Little To

All Art Constantly Aspires To The Condition Of Music....in Its Ideal, Consummate Moments, The End Is Not Distinct From The Means, The Form From The Matter, The Subject From The Expression; They Inhere In And Completely Saturate Each Other.

In Truth, The Legitimate Contention Is, Not Of One Age Or School Of Literary Art Against Another, But Of All Successive Schools Alike, Against The Stupidity Which Is Dead To The Substance, And The Vulgarity Which Is Dead To Form.

How Shall We Pass Most Swiftly From Point To Point, And Be Present Always At The Focus Where The Greatest Number Of Vital Forces Unite In Their Purest Energy?

That The Mere Matter Of A Poem, For Instance--its Subject, Its Given Incidents Or Situation; That The Mere Matter Of A Picture--the Actual Circumstances Of An Event, The Actual Topography Of A Landscape--should Be Nothing Without The Form, The Spirit Of The Handling, That This Form, This Mode Of Handling, Should Become An End In Itself, Should Penetrate Every Part Of The Matter;mthis Is What All Art Constantly Strives After, And Achieves In Different Degrees.

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.