Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Gold

• The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Mean, Feel Good

  "The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude".

• Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong; men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Men, Long

• Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, School, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1883). “Emerson's Complete Works”

• 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

• The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, School, Eye

• The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of tune, isto make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Responsibility, Intelligent

• Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A Nation's Strength”

• An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Change, Rivers, Gold

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.177, Penguin

• The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tablets yet unbroken: The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Wind, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Problem”

• Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Iron, Gold

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.402, Harvard University Press

• Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Real, Jewels

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.526, Harvard University Press

• What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Children, Book

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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