Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About History

• The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Inspirational, Life

• Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2630, Delphi Classics

• The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

• The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny, Friendship, Prayer

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty: Books, Art Eloquence. Power, Wealth, Illusions”

• We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Morning, Philosophy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2366, Delphi Classics

• The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Art, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.153, Harvard University Press

• In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Work, Philosophy

  1841 Essays: First Series,'Self-Reliance'.

• Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wind, Knives, Roots

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1959). “Emerson: A Modern Anthology”

• Language is the archives of history.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Historical, Archives

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.457, Library of America

• Knowledge is the only elegance.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.146, University of Georgia Press

• It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.209, Harvard University Press

• Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Rocks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.184, University of Missouri Press

• A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Squares, Expression

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.96, Harvard University Press

• A man is a god in ruins.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Art, Philosophy

  Nature ch. 8 (1836).

• The greatest man in history was the poorest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, History, Historical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2442, Delphi Classics

• There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Work

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

• The first lesson of history is that evil is good.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Evil, Lessons

• History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Two, History, Action

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.270, Penguin

• In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, History, Individual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.408, Harvard University Press

• It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Writing, Reality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.75, Courier Corporation

• There is properly no history, only biography.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny Life, History, Historical

  Essays "History" (1841)

• In analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Profound, Causes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.260, Harvard University Press

• Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Past, Snakes, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.159, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

• Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Military, Hero, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.374, Library of America

• Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Civilization, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.443, Harvard University Press

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