Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Books

• Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Nature, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.385, Penguin

• Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Books And Reading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.149, Courier Corporation

• Every burned book enlightens the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, World, Censorship

• Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Book, Needs

• If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Wisdom, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.93, Harvard University Press

• I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Book, Learning

• I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Clever, Hate, Book

  Journal, May 1849

• The virtue of books is to be readable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Virtue

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.339, Harvard University Press

• Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1655, Delphi Classics

• Life is our dictionary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Life Is, Dictionary

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1107, Delphi Classics

• One must be an inventor to read well.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Creative Writers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.66, Penguin

• Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.66, Penguin

• Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Book, Beer

• Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Birthday, Book, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.65, Penguin

• If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Quoted in Decatur (Ill.) Daily Republican, 19 May 1882.

• We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and seem tomeasure their own sense of well-being, not by what they do, but by the degree of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid of them by not minding them: if purring and humming is not noticed, they squeal and screech; then if you chide and console them, they find the experiment succeeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your arms contented if you do nothing. If you take a book and read, he commences hostile operations.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Book, Arms

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2955, Delphi Classics

• My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Smell, Should

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.304, Penguin

• A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Eye, Men

• But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1921). “Representative men. Miscellanies”

• Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Time, Future

• In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Beer

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.93, Harvard University Press

• It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Judging, Creative

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.334, Modern Library

• It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Years, Drunk

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “Lectures and biographical sketches”

• What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Eye, My Friends

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

• Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Book, Reading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.150, Harvard University Press

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