Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Pleasure

• Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Death, Summer, July

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1978). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1854-1861”, p.17, Harvard University Press

• Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Peace, Pleasure, Sincerely

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2367, Delphi Classics

• Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Flower, Punishment, Fruit

  "Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson".

• Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Pain, Essence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.142, Open Road Media

• In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Stars, Moon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.32, North Atlantic Books

• A beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of fine arts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.529, Library of America

• It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Journey, Hiking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “Thoreau”, p.21, The Minerva Group, Inc.

• Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Pain, Curiosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.42, Courier Corporation

• The exercise of all the senses is as intense pleasure, as anyone will find, who recovers the use of one after being deprived of it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Exercise, Thinking, Use

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen E. Whicher (1959). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.44, Harvard University Press

• There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Differences, Quality, Pleasure

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1352, Delphi Classics

• Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not cheap.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Cost, Too Much

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.58, Harvard University Press

• The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant.This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sacrifice, Years, Criticism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.301

• The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or place.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Life Is, Pleasure

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.335

• The Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Patriotic, Boston, Cities

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.599, Modern Library

• I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wish, Experience

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.413

• There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Pain, Grief

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “The Power of Emerson's Wisdom”

• 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

• Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Men, Air

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.228, Cosimo, Inc.

• If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Men, Balance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.63, Xist Publishing

• 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 true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Animal, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.362

• The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Feelings, Magic, Owing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty: Books, Art Eloquence. Power, Wealth, Illusions”

• The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Law, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.381

• We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Angel, Thrones, Pleasure

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.406, Library of America

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