Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Interpretation
Art encourages us to stay true to our genuine selves despite external pressures.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of authenticity and self-expression in art. He suggests that true masterpieces not only inspire us but also teach us the necessity of remaining steadfast in our unique perspectives, even when faced with opposition from societal norms or popular opinion. This idea underlines the value of individualism and the courage required to uphold one's beliefs and creativity in the face of adversity.
In practice
During an art exhibition, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of individual expression in artistic works.
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?
The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.
When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices.
The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust.
Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.
One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is.
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