Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Literature

• The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Teacher, Philosophy

• Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to bewritten, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Simple, Air, Simplicity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Graphic Arts Books

• He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Wise, Philosophy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.140, David R. Godine Publisher

• The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Moving, Views, Use

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.71, Penguin

• In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Hands, Broken

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2797, Delphi Classics

• Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Simple, Simplicity, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Selected Writings”, p.126, Simon and Schuster

• Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.148, Harvard University Press

• A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Educational, Philosophy

• Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Evil, Shadow, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.487, Library of America

• Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Years, Two, Enemy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.96, Harvard University Press

• In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Talking, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.378

• Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Men, Literature

• The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.158, Penguin

• Every novel is a debtor to Homer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Debtors, Fiction, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.274, Bantam Classics

• Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us arerushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Land, Long, Independence

  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.52, Harvard University Press

• Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Coward, Finals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.62, Courier Corporation

• Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides,and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Fighting, Hot

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.209, Penguin

• Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Religious, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.364

• What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Done, Literature, Ill

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.267, Harvard University Press

• But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Book, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.281, Modern Library

• Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Chinese, Literature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2612, Delphi Classics

• Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Facts, Novelists

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.101, Harvard University Press

• Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Intuition, Literature

• I can find my biography in every fable that I read.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fiction, Literature, Biographies

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.36, Harvard University Press

• We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Exercise, Names, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.404, Рипол Классик

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