“Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives
“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world
“Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time
“Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand