When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected - and this life with which men are in love is represented in a thousand forms.

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.

Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his characters in a position where it was right to do wrong.

Robert Green Ingersoll Quotes