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'.

• The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Ties, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.85, Harvard University Press

• Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Philosophy, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.164, Рипол Классик

• When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Plato, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.151, Harvard University Press

• The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Sleep, Loss

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

• Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Fate, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.360, Penguin

• Do you love me? Means at last do you see the same truth I see? If you do, we are happy together; but when presently one of us passes into the perception of a new truth, we are divorced and the force of all nature cannot hold us to each other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mean, Perception, Together

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.80, Harvard University Press

• The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Greatness, Luxury, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1912). “Society and solitude”

• The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Structure, Senses

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.484

• How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perception, Mind, Division

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1393, Delphi Classics

• I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Giving, Brave, Joy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.229, U of Nebraska Press

• Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Kindness, Men

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

• The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Change, Anchors, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.88, Courier Corporation

• 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

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