Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

The quotation is from Emerson’s ESSAY XII Art:

“In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art
perfected, — the work of genius. And the individual, in whom simple
tastes and susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower
the accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of
art. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must
carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer
charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever
teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character,
— a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound,
of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore
most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.”