The purest joy known to the reader is a perception of the beauty and power of a work of art so fresh and instantaneous that it completely absorbs the whole nature.

Analysis, criticism, and judicial appraisement come later; the first moment must be surrendered to the joy of discovery.
Heine has recorded the overpowering impression made upon him by the first glimpse of the Venus of Melos.

An experience so extreme in emotional quality could come only to a nature singularly sensitive to beauty and abnormally sensitive to physical emotion; but he who has no power of feeling intensely the power of beauty in the moment of discovery, has missed something of very high value in the process of culture.

One of the signs of real culture is the power of enjoyment which goes with fresh feeling.

All great art is full of this feeling; its characteristic is the new interest with which it invests the most familiar objects; and one evidence of capacity to receive culture from art is the development of this feeling.