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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes about Art - Page 4

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The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.

The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise, Spiritual, Art
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.163

In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, Art
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.118, Jazzybee Verlag

Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Art, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty: Books, Art Eloquence. Power, Wealth, Illusions”

The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Lying, Thoughtful
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.276, Modern Library

The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faith, Art, Truth
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.155

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Men, Simple
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.215, Harvard University Press

It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Creativity, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2417, Delphi Classics

The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Art, Feelings
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.23, Harvard University Press

Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Writing, Law
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.48, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Thinking, People
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.399

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Animal, Quality
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Running, Art, Skills
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.192

He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Giving Up, Ambition
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.472, Harvard University Press

Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Philosophy, History
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.260, Library of America

The eye is the best of artists.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Eye, Artist
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.39, Harvard University Press

A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Expression, Different
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Respect, Art, Eye
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.539, Рипол Классик

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Real, Abiding

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Art, Muse
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.150, The Floating Press

In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Cities, Greek
The Conduct of Life "Wealth" (1860)

How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Nature, Broken
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.379

The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, School, Eye

Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Creativity, Reality
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1122, Library of America

Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;--and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Art, Angel
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.378, Library of America

And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Character, Dark
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1084, Library of America

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