You can live three days without bread–without poetry, never…you need
art.
Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and
cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural
equilibrium of the ideal. You understand its function , you gentlemen of
the bourgeoisie–whether lawgivers or businessmen–when the seventh or
eighth hour strikes and you bend your tired head towards the embers of
your hearth or the cushions of your armchair. That is the time when a
keener desire and a more active reverie would refresh you after your
daily labors.
–Charles Baudelaire “To the Bourgeois” – The Salon of 1846 (1846)