To give the public what they do not want, and yet expect to be supported: we have there a strange pretension, and yet not uncommon, above all with painters. The first duty in this world is for a man to pay his way; when that is quite accomplished, he may plunge into what eccentricity he likes; but emphatically not till then.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Essay (1888-09), “A Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposes to Embrace the Career of Art,” Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3
    (Source)

Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 10 (1892).