This thing has been said by Emerson with incomparable clarity:  In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.  Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this.  They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility most when the cry of voices is on the other side.  Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced with shame to take our opinion from another.

Edward Hopper in an article on painter Charles Burchfield, The Arts, July, 1928

“