Shakespeare’s famous phrase that art should hold the mirror up to nature is always taken as wholly realistic; but it is really idealistic and symbolic [...]  Art is a mirror not because it is the same as the object, but because it is different.  A mirror selects as much as art selects; it gives the light of flames, but not their heat; the colour of flowers, but not their fragrance; the faces of women, but not their voices; the proportions of stockbrokers, but not their solidity.  A mirror is a vision of things, not a working model of them.

The Uses of Diversity (1921)