Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature Quotes

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When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.

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
This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Say, what other metre is it
Than the meeting of the eyes?
Nature poureth into nature
Through the channels of that feature
Riding on the ray of sight,
Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,
Or for service, or delight,
Hearts to hearts their meaning show.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creepinto a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The law of nature is: Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not do the thing have not the power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature: She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Deep insight will always, like Nature, ultimate its thought in a thing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are two classes of poets — the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

Ralph Waldo Emerson