Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Birds

• For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thanksgiving, Song, Sweet

• Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Stars, Rain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2003). “Nature and Other Writings”, p.177, Shambhala Publications

• Let the bird sing without deciphering the song.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Song, Learning, Knowledge

• Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Song, Nature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.147, University of Georgia Press

• Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gun, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.522

• Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Years, Bird

• It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Journey, Hiking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “Thoreau”, p.21, The Minerva Group, Inc.

• We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Flower, Passion, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.51, Penguin

• 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

• To the birds and trees he talks:
  Caesar of his leafy Rome,
  There the poet is at home.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Home, Rome

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Emerson: Poems”, p.197, Everyman's Library

• You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Song, Bird, Verbs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.794, Harvard University Press

• The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Eye, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.468

• What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Effort, Bird, Cost

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.163, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

• The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to hermother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Song, Morning

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.101, Courier Corporation

• By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Song, Nature, Wall

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.159, The Floating Press

• Henceforth, please God, forever I forego the yolk of men's opinions. I will be light-hearted as a bird and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, and I hear continually his voice therein.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Men, Light

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.738, Modern Library

• 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”

• An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Character, Mean

• Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Bird, Secret

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.179

• We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Apples, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.39, Harvard University Press

• Hither rolls the storm of heat;
  I feel its finer billows beat
  Like a sea which me infolds;
  Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
  Swells, and mellows, and matures,
  Paints, and flavors, and allures,
  Bird and brier inly warms,
  Still enriches and transforms,
  Gives the reed and lily length,
  Adds to oak and oxen strength,
  Transforming what it doth infold,
  Life out of death, new out of old.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Oxen, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.182, Delphi Classics

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