Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
What we see changes who we are.
I think that people need to have the courage of their convictions and not be trying to fool people into thinking that they've changed overnight.
The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.
Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.
In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.
We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals of interest in even the most obscure ones tend to reveal more about those who make revisionist assessments than about those who are being reassessed.
A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.
Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.