Edmund Clarence Stedman Art Quotations

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.

Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.

Progress comes by experiment, and this from ennui that leads to voyages, wars, revolutions, and plainly to change in the arts of expression; that cries out to the imagination, and is the nurse of the invention whereof we term necessity the mother.