We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
About This Quote

To be unable to access beauty, of course, is one of the greatest of all limitations. We can all agree with the poet that beauty is indeed elusive. But this does not mean that we cannot approach it. We can approach it by trying to see it in everything.

We can approach it by focusing on the beauty in our own lives. The poem compares beauty to opal, which reflects light in all directions, like a rainbow. It is something that defies appropriation and use; it is something that defies our attempts to claim it.

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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.
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