public beauty and novelty

• The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. The vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter, and it is extremely distasteful to the public ... The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses
• A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to the public, and whenever it appears they get angry, and bewildered. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.
• A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions that one objects to.