"Now you are insisting that genius must be useful, and benefit the world as though it were cotton,--but perhaps you think logic as antediluvian as your poor old father." Butscha, La Briere, and Madame Latournelle exchanged glances that were more than half derisive, and drove Modeste to a pitch of irritation that kept her silent for a moment.
"Mademoiselle, do not mind them," said Canalis, smiling upon her, "we are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction.

Every work of art, let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial products.

Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short.

An author pockets ten thousand francs for his book; the making of books means the manufactory of paper, a foundry, a printing-office, a bookseller,--in other words, the employment of thousands of men.

The execution of a symphony of Beethoven or an opera by Rossini requires human arms and machinery and manufactures.