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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 118

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Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will.

Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Running, Art, Skills
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.192

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Summer, Morning, Spring

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, men to whom a crisis, which intimidates and paralyzes the majority, comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Majority, Hearing

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science, Knowing, Bragging
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.50, Harvard University Press

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Levels, Tongue, Wit And Humor
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.86, Harvard University Press

The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, Demand, Ability
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.49, Coyote Canyon Press

The dice of God are always loaded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Luck, Dice
1841 Essays: First Series,'Compensation'.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strength, Strong, Believe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.432

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Greed, Giants, Growing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.377

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, Smoking, Firsts
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.452, Harvard University Press

No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Taken, Men, Knowing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Limits, Interest
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.406, Library of America

We put our love where we have put our labor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Effort, Our Love, Work Effort
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.161, Harvard University Press

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spiritual, Fall, Believe

He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art, Giving Up, Ambition
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.472, Harvard University Press

Genius appeals to the future.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Future, Genius, Appeals

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Eye, Science, Boys
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.73, North Atlantic Books

The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature, Teaching, Science
Nature Discipline (p. 38)

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science, Use, Able
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.229, Penguin

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Philosophical, Men, Needs
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.96, Harvard University Press

Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spiritual, Men, Expression

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book, Men, Judging
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.305, University of Georgia Press

You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge, Roots, Progress
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.419, Library of America

We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate, Battle, Born
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.32, Courier Corporation

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, Inspiration, Solitude
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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