“Unfortunately, words can convey facts; unfortunately, people in general have an ill-regulated but insatiable appetite for facts.”

His dry complaint about the reading public's hunger for mere fact over art · Introduction, Studies in Prose and Verse

• Art
• Truth

“He does not realise, as the great novelists have realised, that stupidity can be pathetic, and that there is not a peasant in whom the soul has not its part.”

His insistence that even unremarkable lives hold something worth an artist's sympathy · Critical essay on Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

• Art
• Truth

“Nor do I affect to doubt that the creation of the supreme emotion is a higher form of art than the reflection of the most exquisite sensation.”

A concession that deep feeling in art outranks mere delicate impression · Preface, second edition of Silhouettes, 1896

• Art