Every obstacle must at first be put in the path of the aspiring artist. For it is only those whom you cannot discourage who are worth encouraging.

Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the earlier periods.