Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
Interpretation
True beauty transcends physical attributes and is found in the ability to evoke imagination.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that while things may possess qualities like grace and elegance, they do not achieve true beauty until they resonate with the human imagination. In essence, beauty is not just about appearance; it arises from the deeper emotional and intellectual connections that objects or experiences can inspire within us.
In practice
In a conversation about art and aesthetics, one might say this quote to express the deeper nature of beauty.
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 writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him--a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured--captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought.
With all the new media outlets out there, with all the noise, a voice of authority and calm like Vogue becomes more important than ever. The more eyes on fashion, the more opinions about fashion, the more exploration of fashion around the world, the better it is for Vogue. Vogue is like Nike or Coca-Colaβthis huge global brand. I want to enhance it, I want to protect it, and I want it to be part of the conversation.
In music, you ain't really got to be able to sing. In comedy, you may be cute, you may be able to add a little extra to your routine, but if you're not funny, no one's really rocking with you - and if you're a black woman, you better be hilarious. As usual, we always have to do the most.
There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist-musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.