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Ralph Waldo Emerson
409 quotes
“I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April 1859
“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1859
“A nation never falls but by suicide.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1861
“You can take better care of your secret than another can.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1863
“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man is a god in ruins.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The soul is subject to dollars.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is our dictionary.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thought is all light, and publishes itself to the universe. It will speak, though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. It will bring you friendships. It will impledge you to truth by the love and expectation of generous minds. By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That which is best about conservatism, that which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is the Inevitable.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and officiousness of our wills.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the value of the Communities; not what they have done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature provides such in every society, — only let us have the real instead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our inspiration from the best. In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy and honor.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, and be the nobility of this land. In every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which should be that nation but these States? Which should lead that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young American?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck,— 'Judgement and a judge we seek.' Not to monarchs they repair, Nor to learned jurist's chair; But they hurry to their peers, To their kinsfolk and their dears; Louder than with speech they pray,— 'What am I? companion, say.'”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source