Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Art"

I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple...

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem.