Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
Interpretation
Art is about perception; it exists in your immediate environment and attitude rather than distant travels.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that art is not a distant treasure to be found in far-off lands but rather something that should be recognized and appreciated in our daily lives and surroundings. If one fails to see the beauty and creativity at home, the search for art in other places becomes futile.
In practice
In a speech to students about recognizing local art and talent.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.
We're human beings, and we want stories. We're always going to be entertained and have our emotions touched by humanity and by things that we recognize in our own lives. So whilst every now and again we'll be happy to watch a bubblegum film, it's never gonna be the only things that get made.
Art resides in the quality of doing, process is not magic.
One of the things that kept me out of trouble was doing something creative - creativity can't be judged.
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