Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Observation

• By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creative, Delight, Warp

  Letters and Social Aims "Quotation and Originality" (1876)

• How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Girl, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.197, David R. Godine Publisher

• The refining influence is the study of art, which is the science of beauty; and I find that every man values every scrap of knowledge in art, every observation of his own in it, every hint he has caught from another. For the laws of beauty are the beauty of beauty, and give the mind the same or a higher joy than the sight of it gives the senses. The study of art is of high value to the growth of the intellect.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Sight

• It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervadedand dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Memories, Block

  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.34, Harvard University Press

• The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Nature, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.71, Harvard University Press

• Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Science, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.57, Penguin

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