Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Interpretation
Beauty exists for its own sake, regardless of its purpose.
In this quote, Emerson reflects on the idea that beauty should not be justified by its usefulness or practicality. Instead, it has intrinsic value and significance, suggesting that the mere presence of beauty in the world is a valid reason for its existence, inspiring us to appreciate and celebrate the aesthetic aspects of life without needing a functional rationale.
In practice
In a discussion about art and its significance, one could quote Emerson to emphasize that beauty holds value beyond practicality.
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?
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party
The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the Earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise -- then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on this truth, then we shall perish.
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
I know this is insane, but i somehow wish i had been in auschwitz with my parents so i could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.
The ethic of liberal individualism has so deeply permeated the psyches of blacks... of all classes that we have little support for a political ethic of communalism that promotes the sharing of resources.
Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
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