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 Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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The quotation is from Emerson's ESSAY XII Art:
In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art
perfected, -- the work of genius. And the individual, in whom simple
tastes and susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower
the accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of
art. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must
carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer
charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever
teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character,
-- a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound,
of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore
most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.
(http://www.netreach.net/~nhojem/emerson/art_xii.txt)
Emerson's essay is forgotten, washed away by the tides of time, leaving one thought like a beautiful shell behind.
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I think one must possess the 'sight' for beauty, in order to 'see' beauty. Otherwise, what one 'sees' is the obscene, which so often passes for what beauty is.
MTC: I love your sentence:
"Emerson's essay is forgotten, washed away by the tides of time, leaving one thought like a beautiful shell behind."
Whenever I read a saying by Emerson, I always feel as if I'm washed clean, and my spirit is refreshed. I sort of feel like that shell the tide washes over.
Thank you for the full context.
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You're welcome, Miriam.
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Daemon wrote:Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) What we must carry with us is the capacity to absorb and reflect, nothing less.
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To hold a mirror up to nature, Verb. ?
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excaelis wrote:To hold a mirror up to nature, Verb. ? Yes, indeed. Hopefully the artist has done it. Next, it's our turn to reflect the beauty of that art inward to make it "one with nature" again.
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