"The world - and even the world of artists - is full of people who can go to the Louvre, walk rapidly, without so much as a glance, past rows of very interesting, though secondary, pictures, to come to a rapturous halt in front of a Titian or a Raphael - one of those that have been most popularized by the engraver's art; then they will go home happy, not a few saying to themselves, 'I know my Museum.' Just as there are people who, having once read Bossuet and Racine, fancy that they have mastered the history of literature.

Fortunately from time to time there comes forward righters of wrong, critics, amateurs, curious enquirers, to declare that Raphael, or Racine, does not contain the whole secret, and that the minor poets too have something good, solid and delightful to offer; and finally that however much we may love general beauty, as it is expressed by classical poets and artists, we are no less wrong to neglect particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the sketch of manners"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.1. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].