Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Fathers

• I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope that it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Brother, Father

  "Self-Reliance". Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, en.wikisource.org. 1847.

• 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

• My son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Fathers Day, Children

  Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1888). “The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, L834-l872”

• He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Philosophy, Party

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1400, Delphi Classics

• Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Writing, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, Harvard University Press

• Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Father, Enjoy Life

• We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Wall, Father

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.265, Penguin

• [W]e pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectrograph arrived, as cheated out of their human estate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Ocean, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1871). “Society and Solitude and Other Essays”, p.142

• The Oversoul is before Time, and Time, Father of all else, is one of his children.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Father, Soul

• Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friends, Children, Father

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.52, 谷月社

• The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Art, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2452, Delphi Classics

• How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or mother's life?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Father, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.320

• What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Science, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.277, Penguin

• I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Brother, Father

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.22, Coyote Canyon Press

• In England every man you meet is some man's son; in America, he may be some man's father.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Son, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.153, Penguin

• Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Believe, Son

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.381, Modern Library

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville