Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Expression
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I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.
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Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
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I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
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I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, - and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
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We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
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Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, - a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.
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By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.