Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Property

• As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Civilization, Long, Belief

  1850 Representative Men,'Napoleon, the Man of the World'.

• Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Men, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.84, Open Road Media

• Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Men, Individuality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2614, Delphi Classics

• On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Real, Writing

  Essays, Second Series "Politics" (1844)

• Greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Greatness, Men, Long

  "Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson".

• We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Money, Real

• Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Player, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.350

• Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Stars, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876). “Nature: Addresses, and Lectures”, p.152

• We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Individuality, Taught, Action

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.35, Penguin

• No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Littles, Arithmetic

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.82

• And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Government, Self, Want

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.37, Courier Corporation

• It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Views

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1287, Delphi Classics

• Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ideas, Property

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1973). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1847-1848”, p.155, Harvard University Press

• As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Laughter, Wine, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.253, Penguin

• Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. ... These road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Men, Light

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2017). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.214, Broadview Press

• Natural science sharpens the discrimination. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie; their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Thinking, Acid

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen E. Whicher (1959). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.75, Harvard University Press

• As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Science, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.311, University of Georgia Press

• And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Thinking, Thoughtful

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.481, Penguin

• In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Cities, Greek

  The Conduct of Life "Wealth" (1860)

• Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framedon the ratio of owners and of owning.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rights, Government, Demand

• I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Pride, Accomplishment

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1339, Delphi Classics

• Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Fall, Color

• The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Constitution, Influence, Degrading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1500, Delphi Classics

• The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Home, Differences

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

• There is a property in the horizon which no man has, but he whose eyes can integrate all the parts,--that is, the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Men, Horizon

  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.9, Harvard University Press

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