Ralph Waldo Emerson on Beauty
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“Beauty without expression tires.”
“The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary.”
“Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.”
“Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,— Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old? Or what was the service For which I was sold?”
“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being.”