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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 150

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Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, Imagination, Doe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2539, Delphi Classics

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, May, Belief
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.73

Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, Lying, Believe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.954, Library of America

The life of man is a self-evolving circle.

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

Life is a search after power.

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

He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Self Reliance, Doe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.129, Penguin

Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Dark, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom, Surplus, Nations
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.340, Penguin

We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dream, Desire, World
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.125, Harvard University Press

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Beautiful, Nature

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew: The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Christian, Rome
"The Problem" l. 19 (1847)

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

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

Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty, Eye, Sky
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.447, Penguin

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Morning, Men, Sick
Essays, Second Series "New England Reformers" (1844)

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time, Long, Understanding
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.170, Modern Library

The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hope, Time, Truth
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.174

When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the show fiber has passed into your body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Shoes, Body

Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hate, Law, Apathy

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals; - The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stars, Goal, Shining
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.330, Delphi Classics

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book, Reading, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.153, Courier Corporation

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Loss, Men, Long
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2125, Delphi Classics

The highest virtue is always against the law.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Law, Virtue, Highest
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.115, University of Missouri Press

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work, Learning, Sacrifice
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.69, Penguin

To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Laughing, Stories, Laugh Often

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Gratitude, Prayer, Memories
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1191, Delphi Classics

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