Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Mankind

• Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Mean, Science

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.622, Modern Library

• Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Stars, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876). “Nature: Addresses, and Lectures”, p.152

• All mankind love a lover.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Life, Romance

  Essays "Love" (1841)

• The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind - whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world - is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. Jesus belonged to the race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul. One man was true to what is in you and me. He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Eye, Men

  Address in Divinity College, americanliterature.com. July 15, 1838.

• Every man has a vocation. The talent is the call.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Talent, Mankind

• The populace drags down the gods to their own level.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Levels, Drag, Mankind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2728, Delphi Classics

• A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Men, Ends

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.343

• Man is physical as well as metaphysical, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Misfits, Metaphysical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.202, Graphic Arts Books

• Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  What Matters, Giving, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.137, Harvard University Press

• It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fighting, Ignorant, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2972, Delphi Classics

• 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)

• Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Transcendentalism, Saddles, Mankind

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

• The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.404, Library of America

• A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Lying, Heart

  Address in Divinity College, americanliterature.com. July 15, 1838.

• Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Conversation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.144, Harvard University Press

• Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Class, Two, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2360, Delphi Classics

• Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Fate, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.72, Courier Corporation

• The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled upin the skull of Napoleon!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Greatness, Class, Skulls

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.352

• The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Records, Gains

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.266, Harvard University Press

• Is it not manifest that our academic institutions should have a wider scope; that they should not be timid and keep the ruts of the last generation, but that wise men thinking for themselves and heartily seeking the good of mankind, and counting the cost of innovation, should dare to arouse the young to a just and heroic life; that the moral nature should be addressed in the school-room, and children should be treated as the high-born candidates of truth and virtue?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Wise, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.51, University of Georgia Press

• As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4265, Delphi Classics

• Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Plato, Philosophy, Philosophical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Plato, or the philosopher”, p.2, Editora Dracaena

• The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion; but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Believe, Technology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.265, Penguin

• What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Tears, Forests, Opinion

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

• And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Two, Romance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville