Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Perception

• People only see what they are prepared to see.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Change, Spiritual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.514, Harvard University Press

• The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

• Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Happiness, Dream

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.473, Library of America

• The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Humility, Greatness, Essence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.76, 谷月社

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Men, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.118, Penguin

• By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Angel, Men, Sharks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.74, Harvard University Press

• Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Perception, Thrive

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.234

• Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mirrors, Perception, Mind

• Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Birth, Elegance

• It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Art, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.158

• Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Years, Bird

• The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Ties, Insanity

  1876 Letters and Social Aims,'The Comic'.

• No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Men, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Penguin

• We imperatively require a perception of and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Degrees, Taste

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.88, 谷月社

• Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character until seen with the shore or the ship.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ocean, Character, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.226

• Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Law, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.183

• Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pride, Men, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Harvard University Press

• Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dark, Power, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.208, Harvard University Press

• The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Perception, Moral

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.399

• The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Ocean, Men

  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.68, Harvard University Press

• The light by which we see in this world comes out from the soul of the observer. Wherever any noble sentiment dwelt, it made the faces and houses around to shine. Nay, the powers of this busy brain are miraculous and illimitable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Light, House, Shining

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.241, University of Georgia Press

• No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, History, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.350, Penguin

• Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Life Is, Should

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

• The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Self, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.453, Library of America

• My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeinga Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Responsibility, Roots, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.485

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