Her spirit and her optimism are organic to the American spirit, and that's what this show is about.

Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America

If anything, I consider it another Normandy. I think this sends a message to the world that the American spirit is alive and kicking.

We need a new spirit of community, a sense that we are all in this together, or the American Dream will continue to wither. Our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every other American.

Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.

Whatever the movements of the soul, the spirit, the sensibility that are manifested in one's work, and whether the state is one of anguish or even despair, one's art inevitably bears the sign of... this liberation, this sublimation which evokes in us a finished form.