“Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.”

“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.”

“What does it all mean?' I said.'A good question,' he rejoined: 'nobody knows what anything is; a man can learn only what a thing means. Whether he do, depends on the use he is making of it.”

“Where people know their work and do it, life has few blank spaces for boredom and they are seldom to be pitied. Where people have not yet found their work, they may be more pitied than those that beg their bread. When a man knows his work and will not do it, pity him more than one who is to be hanged tomorrow.”

“But I never just quite liked that ryhme.''Why not, child?''Because it seems to say one's as good as another, or two new ones are better than one that's lost. . . . Somehow, when once you've looked into anybody's eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one any more. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight.”

“A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.”

“That's a poet.''I thought you said it was a bo-at.''Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?''Why, a thing to sail on the water in.''Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'...'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.”