Shakespeare fills us with wonder

“ Shakespeare fills us with wonder the first time we approach him. We go away, & work, & think, for years, & and come again, he astonishes us anew. Then having drank deeply & saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of it for another period of years. By & by we return, & there he stands immeasurable as at first. We have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than ever. He resembles a high mountain which the traveller sees the morning & thinks he shall quickly near it & pass it & leave it behind. But he journeys all day till noon, till night. There still is the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings since the morning light. ”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson [from his journals, Nov. 10-11, 1838], in EMERSON IN HIS JOURNALS, selected and edited by Joel Porte, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachsetts) - London (England), 1982.