Some teachers of mankind - as Plato... the first Christians, the orthodox Muslims, and the Buddhists - have gone so far as to repudiate art. ...[They consider it] so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art. ...such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied - one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. ...Now there is only fear, lest we should be deprived of any pleasures art can afford, so any type of art is patronized. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful.

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good an…

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, [play or] a…

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

There are two modes of criticism. One which ... crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful,…

Criticism will need an injection of humility - that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. S…