Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
2,528 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Nature hates calculators; her methods are salutatory and impulsive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved, by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant is the lord that shall be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
I quote another man's saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1
...
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
...
85
Quote of the day
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
Richard Adams
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creative Commons
Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
Bio:
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
Known for:
Self-Reliance (1841)
Nature (1836)
Essays: First Series (1841)
Representative Men
The Conduct of Life (1860)
Most used words:
man
nature
life
thought
love
power
time
soul
truth
mind
god
find
day
beauty
eyes
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Wikipedia
Ralph Waldo Emerson works on Gutenberg Project
Ralph Waldo Emerson works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Short Quotes
Quotes about Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Essayist Quotes
Essayist Quotes
19th-century Essayist Quotes
Related Authors
Henry David Thoreau
American Author
Walt Whitman
American Poet
Nathaniel Hawthorne
American Novelist
Margaret Fuller
American Activist
Emily Dickinson
American Poet
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes