Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

He thought it happier to be dead, to die for beauty, than live for bread.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

All high beauty has a moral element in it.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never fixed, but always flowing.

In the vaunted works of Art, The master-stroke is Nature’s part.