A work of art that truly achieves ‘fulfillment’ will never be surpassed; it will never grow old. the individual can assess its significance for himself personally in different ways. but no one will ever be able to say that a work that achieves genuine ‘fulfillment’ in an artistic sense has been ‘superseded’ by another work that likewise achieves ‘fulfillment.’
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
Where the spirit of man comes into harmony with a harmony external to it, there is beauty.
Carleton Noyes
The better you come to know something you love in itself, the better you understand how it differs from everything else, how it does something that has never been done before. but the better you understand that, the more other things you need to know in order to compare them to what you love and to distinguish it from them. and the better you know those things, the more likely you are to find that some of them, too, are beautiful, which will start you all over again in an ever-widening circle of new communities and new things to say. it is a dangerous game, pursuing the beautiful. you may never be able to stop.
Alexander Nehamas, An Essay on Beauty and Judgment