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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 65

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The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Future, Past, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.70, Library of America

Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, Confusion, Forgiving
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.350, Modern Library

We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, Impossible Becomes Possible, Impossible
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1172, Delphi Classics

Labor is God's education.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, Work, Labor
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.142, Library of America

Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work, Character, Foolish
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1316, Delphi Classics

Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Looks, Fleeting
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.396

Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion,not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, Country, Past
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.60, Harvard University Press

With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Air, House, Inspire
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.180, Bantam Classics

The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Money, Animal, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.362

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Freedom, Law, Iron
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, second series”, p.124, Harvard University Press

The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Money, Law, Soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.381

If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Thinking, Ice Cream
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.754, Modern Library

If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Church Bells, Blood, Sound
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.277, Harvard University Press

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Slavery, Dull
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1233, Delphi Classics

Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Religious, Humility, Giving
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.258

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character, Men, Genius
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.417

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Memories, Power, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.363

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men, Pay, Sides
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.333

Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Opportunity, Doors, Hands
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.631, Modern Library

The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Travel, Use, Fruit
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.459

Our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowingvigor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hints, Affair, Our Lives
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.212, Penguin

Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Giving, Judging, Doe
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.237

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time, Animal, Joy
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.86, Coyote Canyon Press

Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness,to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dance, Art, Eye
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.212, Harvard University Press

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew In the belly of the grape

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wine, Grapes, Grew
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.71, U of Nebraska Press

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