"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."
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"Outer beauty pleases the EYE. Inner beauty captivates the HEART."

"The quality of beauty lies on how beholder values an object."

"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow."

"Maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts.maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside."

"I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object."

"What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty."

"As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead."

"A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops. Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of anticipation."

"Beauty without grace is like a fish far displaced from the water and looking at this kind of beauty is like watching that fish die right there on the cement in front of you."
Explore more quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect."
