“A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result
or expression of nature, in miniature. For although the works of nature
are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them
all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike
and even unique. A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an
analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, that
perfectness and harmony, is beauty.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
