The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.
It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as "The Well Doing of What Needs Doing."