All Art Constantly Aspires To The Condition

A Book, Like A Person, Has Its Fortunes With One; Is Lucky Or Unlucky In The Precise Moment Of Its Falling In Our Way, And Often By Some Happy Accident Counts With Us For Something More Than Its Independent Value.

The Various Forms Of Intellectual Activity Which Together Make Up The Culture Of An Age, Move For The Most Part From Different Starting-points, And By Unconnected Roads.

Books Are A Refuge, A Sort Of Cloistral Refuge, From The Vulgarities Of The Actual World.

For Us Necessity Is Not As Of Old An Image Without Us, With Whom We Can Do Warfare; It Is A Magic Web Woven Through And Through Us, Like That Magnetic System Of Which Modern Science Speaks, Penetrating Us With A Network Subtler Than Our Subtlest Nerves, Yet Bearing In It The Central Forces Of The World.

One Of The Most Beautiful Passages Of Rousseau Is That In The Sixth Book Of Confessions, Where He Describes The Awakening In Him Of The Literary Sense. Of Such Wisdom, The Poetic Passion, The Desire Of Beauty, The Love Of Art For Its Own Sake, Has Most.