These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBut the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson