It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.
Interpretation
Art helps us to appreciate and understand beauty in the world around us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the vital role of art in shaping our ability to perceive beauty. While beauty surrounds us, our natural perception may be clouded or unclear, and it is through art that we can refine our vision and appreciation for what is beautiful in life.
In practice
During a gallery opening, I shared Emerson's quote to emphasize the transformative power of art.
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?
Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.
[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
I just absolutely needed the theatre so desperately - it was my fate; it was where I was running towards. It was the place where I found peace and survival and all kinds of things.
The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
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