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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 155

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In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking, Men, Degenerates
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.175

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beautiful, Art, Character
1841 Essays: First Series,'Art'.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Distance, Sight, Agreement
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.266, Library of America

The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Summer, Rain, Reality
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.203, Penguin

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

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

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Self, Knives
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2821, Delphi Classics

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Giving, Brave, Joy
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.229, U of Nebraska Press

And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Party, Two, Romance
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, Men, Order
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1849). “Nature”, p.2

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle's, and of a rabbit, rabbit's. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Animal, Duplicity
"Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1893.

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children, Eye, Writing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.256, Library of America

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jewels, Evil, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1893). “Natural history of intellect and other papers”

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Necks, Monsters
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.175

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faults, Facts, States
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.17, Coyote Canyon Press

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise, Stars, Flower
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Nature and the Method of Nature”, p.3, Library of Alexandria

Goodness that preaches undoes itself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Inspirational, Goodness
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.31, Harvard University Press

The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Taken, Office, Patents
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2459, Delphi Classics

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Disappointment, Loss, Years
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Compensation and Self-Reliance”, p.29, Cosimo, Inc.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Discovery, Ignorant
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.66

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Army, Giving, Joy
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.438, Harvard University Press

An empire is an immense egotism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Empires, Egotism, Immense
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860). “Miscellanies: embracing Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.364

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Exaggeration Is, Doe, Exaggeration
Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.267, Harvard University Press

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Food, Reason, Deny
1850 Representative Men,'Montaigne; or, The Skeptic'.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Funeral, Doe, Chiefs
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.58, Harvard University Press

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bystanders, Martyr, Torment

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