Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of Right and Necessity. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-estimated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young anddodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy, things are sweet-tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things admit of being used as symbols, because nature is a symbol, in the whole, and in every part.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's revenge for this humanity.What manner of man does science make? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is very certain that the strong British race which has now overrun much of this continent, must also overrun [Texas], and Mexico and Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done.

Ralph Waldo Emerson