Quietly passing through the rooms, suddenly lost, cast apart from the company of great works of art—- Civilization assumes an air of mystery. Talk of art's illustrious history, though pale and illusory bears no malice of mind—- the human race's saving grace glutton for joy and misery, so cold the art, so cruel and blind for centuries. Long the overcrowded mad house of the earth, drunken, loud, sweet melancholy and so full of mirth, so savagely seized by labor of its birth.© Ernest Slyman
(originally appeared The Thinker)