Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
United States! the ages plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all debts, men are least willing to pay taxes. What a satire is this on government!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life".

Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use...In God, every end is converted into a new means.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals; - The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The orator must be, to some extent, a poet. We are such imaginative creatures that nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civil, as a trope.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only money of God is God. He never pays with any thing less, or any thing else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Marriage is the perfection which love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Experience is the only teacher, and we get his lesson indifferently in any school.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson