Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. . Ralph Waldo Emerson
About This Quote

The art of life is to enjoy the present, and not to be anxious about the future, for the past and the future are already within us. The real art of living lies in enjoyment. The gourmet does not raise himself to perfection by fasting; the musician by silence; the athlete by abstinence; the painter by solitude; nor does any one attain maturity in any line of art under the influence of puritanism. The highest attainment is reached when we find our highest pleasure, and there is no limit to what may be done so long as we do not act below our own ideal.

Source: The Poet

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. - Rainbow Rowell
  2. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. - Vincent Van Gogh
  3. Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. - Clive Barker
  4. Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. - Chuck Klosterman
  5. There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh
More Quotes By Ralph Waldo Emerson
  1. Love, and you shall be loved.
  2. He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
  3. The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.
  4. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
  5. It is not the length of life, but the depth.
Related Topics