Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
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I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
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The first wealth is health.
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If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
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I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
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Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.
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Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
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United States! the ages plead, - Present and Past in under-song, - Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
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When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, 'Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.'
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A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
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History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, - see how it could and must be.
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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.
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Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.
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Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
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The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
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I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
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When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.
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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.
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There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?
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The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.