Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
2,528 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and notlead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Astronomy... compelled a certain extension and uplifting of our views of the Deity and his Providence. This correction of our superstitions was confirmed by the new science of Geology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
I am always insincere, as always knowing there are other moods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Virtue runs before the muse,
and defies her skill;
she is rapt and doth refuse
to wait a painter's will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Earth's a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Our health is our sound relation to external objects; our sympathy with external being.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1
...
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
...
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