Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About College

• The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Graduation, Education, Teaching

  "Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson".

• Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Book, Beer

• We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Learning, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, North Atlantic Books

• We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Horse, Stars

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, North Atlantic Books

• Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Church, Saint

  English Traits "Universities" (1856)

• One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Boys, College

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.391

• The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, College, Thinking

• I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, School, Knowledge

• It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Latin, Sunday

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.21, Рипол Классик

• Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, College, Doors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.162, David R. Godine Publisher

• There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold; for them i will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; - though i confess with shame i sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by i shall have the manhood to withhold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, College, Class

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.12, Penguin

• The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.10, Xist Publishing

• What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, School, College

• Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Years, Gold

  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.58, Harvard University Press

• Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, College, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.325, Bantam Classics

• It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, House, Waiting

• If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Home, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.666, Modern Library

• I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teaching, School, Loss

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2750, Delphi Classics

• You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, College, Professors

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

• I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Lying, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.14, Cosimo, Inc.

• The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beach, Latin, Science

• Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Learning, College

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.419, Library of America

• Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Growing Up, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes (1910). “Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872 [1876] Ed”

• Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Heart, College

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.49, Modern Library

• If the colleges were better, if they had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Order, Rushing

  "The Celebration of Intellect". An Address Delivered Before the Students of Tufts College, quod.lib.umich.edu. July 10, 1861.

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