The universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the universal mind.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of aligning individual creativity with a greater universal consciousness to create value and beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects the idea that creativity and beauty are not solely the products of individual effort, but rather arise from a deep connection to a universal source of knowledge and inspiration. It suggests that to create something truly valuable or aesthetically pleasing, one must transcend personal limitations and engage with the collective wisdom of the universal mind, promoting a sense of unity and collaboration in the act of creation.
In practice
This quote can inspire artists to connect with a deeper source of creativity during a workshop.
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?
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky.
Ask yourself: Does this appearance (of events) concern the things that are within my own control or those that are not? If it concerns anything outside your control, train yourself not to worry about it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.