Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Horses

• Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Passion, Games

• We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and... Nature, the sun and moon, the animals, the water and stones, which should be their toys.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Children, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.76, Courier Corporation

• As the traveler who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Animal, Intuition

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

• 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

• Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Power, Understanding

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1880). “Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

• The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Stars, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.192, Penguin

• Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Vanity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.375

• Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Disputes

• A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Hypocrisy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.650, Harvard University Press

• I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Shoes

  "English Traits". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856.

• A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Feet, Clothes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.427, Harvard University Press

• The horseman serves the horse, The neat-herd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'Tis the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind, Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Meat, Corn

  "Ode Inscribed toW. H. Channing" l. 50 (1847)

• Some men at the approach of a dispute neigh like horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing. Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember; others lay criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not words,--as steps in a dance are not steps,--but reproduce the genius of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of the bell merely, whilst the church chimes in the distance bring the church and its serious memories before us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Memories, Distance

• There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, College, Men

• When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Children, Boys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2389, Delphi Classics

• Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Moving, Technology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.419, Harvard University Press

• Success in your work, the finding a better method, the better understanding that insures the better performing is hat and coat, is food and wine, is fire and horse and health and holiday. At least, I find that any success in my work has the effect on my spirits of all these.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Horse, Wine

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.318, Courier Corporation

• Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Selfish, Pride

  Ralph Waldo, Emerson, (2013). “Nature - Conduct of Life”, p.191, Read Books Ltd

• Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Thoughtful, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1169, Delphi Classics

• A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Dying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1871). “Society and Solitude and Other Essays”, p.19

• For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, House, Language

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.79, Courier Corporation

• I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you."

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Horse, Love You

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

• Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Horse, Christianity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.45, Harvard University Press

• There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Horse, Apology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.268, Graphic Arts Books

• Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Horse, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.130, Harvard University Press

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