Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is evidence of our most creative moment.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will.

The eye is the best of artists.

Art, in the artist, is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes.

It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art.

I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.

But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

New arts destroy the old.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine

Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Be an opener of doors

Be brave enough to do the loving thing.

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.

The life of labor does not make men, but drudges.

Each man has an aptitude born with him. Do your work.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.