Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?
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Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
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Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.
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The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.
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Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.
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The first wealth is health.
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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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I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
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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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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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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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There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
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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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Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
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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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The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
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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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Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.
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The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
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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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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?