Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Heaven

• To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Greatness, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson's Journals, December 20, 1822.

• The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Real, Men

  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.9, Harvard University Press

• Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  House, Heaven, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.48, Library of America

• The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Mean, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.307, Bantam Classics

• Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Heaven, Rejection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1531, Delphi Classics

• No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doors, Heaven, Earth

• 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

• Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rome, Land, Names

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.61, Penguin

• Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Stars, Rain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2003). “Nature and Other Writings”, p.177, Shambhala Publications

• Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Heaven, Deceived

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.188, Harvard University Press

• I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Heaven, Speech

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.357, Harvard University Press

• The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Acceptance, Heaven, Ships

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.142, University of Georgia Press

• He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Garden, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.154, Graphic Arts Books

• God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Awkward, Forgiving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2397, Delphi Classics

• The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Marriage, Acceptance

• Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
  With sudden passion languishing,
  Teaching barren moors to smile,
  Painting pictures mile on mile,
  Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
  Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Teaching

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.163

• The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Angel, Men, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.104, Graphic Arts Books

• Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Humility, Heaven, Bears

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II”, p.425

• Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Heaven, Fruit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.657, Modern Library

• To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gratitude, Grateful, Heaven

• Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
  Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
  Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
  And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
  The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
  Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
  Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Winter, Garden, Rivers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.83, Delphi Classics

• We know that madness belongs to love,--what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Power, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.423, Harvard University Press

• We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Care, Dinner

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.282, Penguin

• We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Pilots, Way

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.142, University of Georgia Press

• The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Eye, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.468

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