Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partizans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,--now under one disguise, now under another,--like a police in citizen's clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who gave thee, O Beauty,
The keys of this breast,--
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson