Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Passion

• 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

• Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Alive, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.100, Courier Corporation

• Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Powerful, Spring, Passion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1966). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1824-1838”, p.32, Harvard University Press

• It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Passion, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”, p.58, Harvard University Press

• The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existance of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Self, Knowing

  "Self-Reliance". Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, en.wikisource.org. 1847.

• The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Communication, Passion, Men

• Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
  With sudden passion languishing,
  Teaching barren moors to smile,
  Painting pictures mile on mile,
  Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
  Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Teaching

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.163

• The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Native American, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes (1911). “Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872 [1876] Ed”

• The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Heart, Sleep

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.156

• I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Appetite, Nationalism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.174, Penguin

• 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

• Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Spiritual, Nature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.238, Penguin

• We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Flower, Passion, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.51, Penguin

• Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Heart

  "Society and Solitude". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Success", 1870.

• We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friends, Passion, Comedian

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.91

• Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Overcoming, Resistance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.452

• And yet--it is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, without expression, tires.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Passion, Expression

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.115, Courier Corporation

• Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Art, Real

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.295

• If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,--the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice,--we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Real, Passion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.122

• The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious; from thesleep of passions to their rage.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Passion, Men, Age

• Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of every day: 'tis the heat which sets our human atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when once it is begun.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Powerful, Spring, Passion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.419

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville