Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
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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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Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.
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I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.
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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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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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A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
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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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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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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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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?
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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
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And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, 'All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile.'
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Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, - now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.
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The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
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I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?
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I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.
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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
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There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all; And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.