Authors:

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 50

All Quotes Acceptance Accomplishment Achievement Acting Addiction Adventure Adversity Affection Age Aids Alcohol Alienation Ambition Anarchy Anger Anxiety Apology Appearance Appreciation Architecture Army Art Astronomy Atheism Atheist Atmosphere Attitude Authority Autumn Awakening Balance Beauty Beer Being Different Being Single Being Yourself Belief Birth Blame Books And Reading Boredom Borrowing Business Caring Challenges Change Chaos Character Charity Childhood Children Choices Christ Christianity Church Civility Coffee College Commitment Common Sense Communication Community Compassion Composition Compromise Concentration Confession Confidence Conflict Conformity Confusion Conscience Consciousness Conspiracy Constitution Contentment Cooking Country Courage Courtship Creation Creative Writing Creativity Crime Criticism Culture Curiosity Cynicism Dancing Darkness Death Defeat Democracy Design Desire Destiny Determination Devil Difficulty Dignity Discipline Diversity Divorce Doom Doubt Drinking Duty Dying Earth Eating Economy Education Effort Elegance Encouragement Encouraging Energy Enthusiasm Environment Envy Epic Equality Eternity Ethics Evidence Evil Evolution Excellence Exercise Experience Failing Failure Faith Fame Family Fashion Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Fitness Flight Focus Food Forgiveness Freedom Friends Friendship Frugality Funeral Funny Future Gardening Gems Generosity Genius Getting Older Giving Giving Up Glory God Gold Good Morning Goodness Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greek Grief Grieving Growing Up Growth Happiness Hard Times Harmony Hate Hatred Healing Health Heart Heaven Helping Others Heroism History Holiday Home Honesty Honor Hope House Humanity Humility Hunting Hurt Husband Hypocrisy Idealism Identity Ignorance Imagination Imitation Immortality Independence Individualism Individuality Injustice Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Intuition Jesus Jewelry Journey Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Justice Karma Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Latin Laughter Law Of Attraction Laziness Leadership Learning Leaving Liberty Life Life And Love Listening Literature Live Life Logic Loneliness Losing Loss Love Love Life Loyalty Luck Lying Magic Mankind Manners Marriage Mask Mediocrity Memories Mental Health Military Mindfulness Mom Money Moon Morality Morning Motherhood Motivation Motivational Mountain Muse Music Mythology Nationalism Nature New Beginnings Obedience Office Old Age Opportunity Optimism Originality Overcoming Pain Painting Passion Past Patience Peace Perception Perfection Persecution Perseverance Personality Perspective Philanthropy Philosophy Photography Plato Pleasure Poetry Police Politics Positive Positive Thinking Positivity Poverty Power Praise Prayer Preaching Prejudice Preparation Pride Progress Property Prophet Prosperity Prudence Public Speaking Purity Purpose Quality Rain Reading Reading Books Reality Recovery Redemption Reflection Regret Reincarnation Rejection Religion Reputation Respect Responsibility Revelations Revolution Rhetoric Risk Romance Romantic Love Running Sacrifice Sadness Safety Sailing Salvation Sanity School Science Self Confidence Self Esteem Self Reliance Self Worth Selfishness Serenity Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Sincerity Skepticism Skins Slavery Sleep Sloth Smoking Society Solitude Sorrow Soul Spirituality Sports Spring Stay Strong Strength Struggle Students Study Stupidity Style Success Suffering Summer Sunday Sunshine Sympathy Talent Taxes Tea Teaching Teamwork Technology Temptation Thankful Thanksgiving Theology Time Time Management Today Trade Tradition Tragedy Transcendentalism Travel Trust Truth Twilight Understanding Unity Universe Values Victory Violence Virtue Vision Vocation Volunteer Waiting Walking Wall War Water Weakness Wealth Weed Wilderness Wine Winning Winter Wisdom Wit Work Worry Worship Writing Yoga Youth
The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, the sweet seriousness of sixteen, the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood,

The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, "the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life,--we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Girl, Sweet
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.310, Cosimo, Inc.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Wish, Experience
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.413

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Believe, Sight
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimneyside of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Wise, Festivals
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.228, Modern Library

The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Bud, Firsts
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.107, Harvard University Press

We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life, Men, Air
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pride, Men, Soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Harvard University Press

The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Brain, Mind, Generations
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.359

The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Nature, Stars
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.151, Courier Corporation

But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the human mind?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science, Law, Mind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1102, Delphi Classics

The worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, reallyshow very little relation to each other; never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition to reconcile themselves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Two, Understanding, Soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.118, Modern Library

A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise, Spirit, Study
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.38, Рипол Классик

We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Skills, One Day
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.161, Harvard University Press

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Apology, Sentences
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.163, Harvard University Press

Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work, Men, Soldier
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.54, Library of America

There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; alwayswe are invited to work.

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

A good deal of our politics is physiological.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Politics, Deals, Physiological
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.347, Penguin

Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jesus, Soul, Conquer
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.25

Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stars, Cutting, Romance
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.104, Courier Corporation

Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Study, Influence, Made
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.74, Open Road Media

Could Shakespeare give a theory of Shakespeare?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Giving, Theory
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.83, Courier Corporation

If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities, Saint, Tire
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.352

Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Real, Inspiration, Intelligent
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Graphic Arts Books

If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it the beauty forsakesall the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beautiful, Stars, Hands
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.161, Harvard University Press

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Plato, Sky, Imagination
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.33

You May Also Like: