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

• It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation,--all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Mind, Religion

• The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,--because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Gone, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.252, Penguin

• Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither property nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Sex, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2329, Delphi Classics

• Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Clothes, Rights

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.470, Modern Library

• When a man becomes cultivated, he develops a new respect for who he is. This causes him to be ashamed of his past identification of himself and others according to things, i.e. property.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Past, Men, Causes

• The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.36, Harvard University Press

• The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Slavery, Dull

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1233, Delphi Classics

• If a man owns land,
  the land owns him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, Men, Land

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.376

• Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Opportunity, Doors, Self

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