Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Animals

• We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and... Nature, the sun and moon, the animals, the water and stones, which should be their toys.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Children, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.76, Courier Corporation

• As the traveler who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Animal, Intuition

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

• We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wise, Animal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.160, Harvard University Press

• We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Healing, Animal, Moon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.160, Harvard University Press

• The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Stars, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.192, Penguin

• Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of water; in male and female; in the equation of quantity and quality; in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole an

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Light, Ebb And Flow

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.137, Penguin

• Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Drama, Character, Cat

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.489, Library of America

• For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Self Reliance, Passionate

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.450, Library of America

• The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Animal, Self

• 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

• A fly is as untamable as a hyena.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Hyenas

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1092, Library of America

• One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Men, Ideas

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Progress, Population

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.297

• To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Destiny, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (195?). “The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in one volume: including the poems, philosophic and inspirational essays, and biographical studies”

• Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health; or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Health, Animal, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2421, Delphi Classics

• Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Taken, Animal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.51, Harvard University Press

• The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Mass, Chimpanzees

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.450

• Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Courage, Men, Animal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.206, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

• As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4265, Delphi Classics

• But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Animal, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.34, Harvard University Press

• The boxer's ring is the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Boxing, Boxers

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