Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Affection

• Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Stars, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876). “Nature: Addresses, and Lectures”, p.152

• Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Marriage, Education, Women

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.103, Courier Corporation

• We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. (Despite) all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether... The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Wind, Selfishness

• The effect of the indulgence of human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Exhilaration, Affection

• Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Honesty, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2334, Delphi Classics

• The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Winter, Night, Tragedy

• The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Romantic Love, Earth, Affection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.290, Harvard University Press

• Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Affection, Caught

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.157

• The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Animal, Order

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.39, Penguin

• So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Ideas, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.48, Library of America

• The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  His Love, Lovers, Affection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.20, Harvard University Press

• In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Islands, Talking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.522, Library of America

• The affections cannot keep their youth any more than men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Youth, Affection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.75, Harvard University Press

• Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Home, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.215, Library of America

• Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Affection, Universal

• I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,--at the end of life just ready to be born,--affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Love Is

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.63, Harvard University Press

• It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation,--all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Mind, Religion

• The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. ... In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Understanding, Affection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.18, Рипол Классик

• The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Inspiration, Sunshine

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.162

• Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Genius, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.10, Harvard University 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

• Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Light, Personality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.99, Graphic Arts Books

• Is not prayer also a study of truth,--a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learningsomething. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into creation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Knowledge, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.70, Harvard University Press

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