We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for… — Friedrich Schiller
We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?
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Live with your century; but do not be its creature. Work for your contemporaries; but create what they need, not what they praise.
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste.
