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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 115

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In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign,

In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children, Men, Years
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.10, Library of America

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, Writing, Creativity
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.389

Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove; Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, Poetry, Tests
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.227, Harvard University Press

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Play, Poetry, Body
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.193, Harvard University Press

In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, Art
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.118, Jazzybee Verlag

A beautiful person among the Greeks, was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods; and we can pardonpride, when a woman possesses such a figure that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, Wall
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.202, Graphic Arts Books

The most useful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high value.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Men, Long
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.471

Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Art, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty: Books, Art Eloquence. Power, Wealth, Illusions”

Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Perfect, Whole
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.98

That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must have also the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Success, Beauty, Wise
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.193, David R. Godine Publisher

Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Sunset, Vision
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.242, Modern Library

Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who could ever clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Knowledge, Moon
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.38, Penguin

Thy dangerous glances make women of men; new-born, we are melting into nature again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Men, Melting
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.118, Delphi Classics

For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, God
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.202, Harvard University Press

We call the beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good and the heartlessness of the true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, Mean
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.290

It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Men, Rose
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.430

The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Lying, Thoughtful
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.276, Modern Library

By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thoughtful, Thinking, Agreement
Ralph Waldo Emerson (189?). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

Generalization is always a new influx of divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Thoughtful, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.179, Penguin

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thoughtful, Thinking, Craze
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Thoughtful, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.311, Penguin

And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge, Thinking, Thoughtful
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.481, Penguin

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Thoughtful, Intellectual
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.58, Harvard University Press

Our thinking is a pious reception.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thoughtful, Thinking, Reception
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth, Thoughtful, Thinking
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.637, Modern Library

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