Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Chemistry

• Who are the farmer's servants? ... Geology and Chemistry, the quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the lightning of the cloud, the castings of the worm, the plough of the frost.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Clouds, Air

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.675, Modern Library

• 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

• He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Magic, Dull

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1460, Delphi Classics

• Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore he is the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Science, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1491, Delphi Classics

• Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Sight, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.401

• Yet things are knowable! They are knowable, because, being from one, things correspond. There is a scale: and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; and science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences,--I call it Dialectic,--which is the Intellect discriminating the false and the true.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Knowledge, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.534, Modern Library

• The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Self, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.453, Library of America

• If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Doe, Mixtures

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Penguin

• 'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Science, Boys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.73, North Atlantic Books

• The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Volcanoes, Sight

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.280, Harvard University Press

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