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

From Emerson’s Essay 12 “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.   In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the Romans, and in the pictures   of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal language   they speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes   from them all. That which we carry to them, the same we bring back more fairly   illustrated in the memory…”

The full essay is linked to the picture below. It’s worth a read 🙂