Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. The perfection of art is to conceal art. Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect. The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then fix it in form.
All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.
A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament. Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness.