Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus says, "it swims on the light of forms." It is properly not in the form, but in the mind. It instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in the horizon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Beauty," The Conduct of Life, 1860
Nude study, Anton Raphael Mengs, 1760
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