I learned a little of beauty — enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth...

Beauty has no superlative.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived... The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.

To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration

There is no true poetry unconcious inspiration.

Beauty; beauty. What was the good of beauty, once it was over? It left nothing behind it but acid regrets, and no heart at all to start fresh. Nearly everything else left something.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

Fame is but a beautiful classic delusion. The inspiration of the poet is like the inspiration of the Delphic oracles: what was once held divine is now confessed the promptings of an evil spirit mocking the votaries of whom it made victims. We firmly believe that the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written. The once writers: will say—“Why should we sacrifice our whole existence to obtain a vain praise, which, after all, never comes sufficiently home to us to be enjoyed? Why should we devote, to this most barren pursuit, industry and talent, which, in any other line, would be certain of that worldly success, which, as we live in the world, is the only success to be de sired?” Even poets must at last learn wisdom. The bitterness and the hollowness of praise will be perceived; and then who will be at the trouble of writing a book? Again we repeat, the time is fast approaching when no more books will be written.

Everything written about art is profoundly unimportant.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Beauty by mistake' — the final phase in the history of beauty.

There was no point in debating the advantages of reality over unreality. There was no reasoning with someone to whom truth was a matter of taste.