Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Quality

• The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Imagination, Quality, Flow

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.170, Penguin

• The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Art, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.153, Harvard University Press

• It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Numbers, Quality, Actors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.204, Library of America

• A skilful man reads his dreams for his selfknowledge; yet not the details, but the quality.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Dream, Men

  "Emerson's Complete Works: Nature, addresses and lectures".

• Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

• Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of water; in male and female; in the equation of quantity and quality; in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole an

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Light, Ebb And Flow

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.137, Penguin

• Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Teaching, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.218, Cosimo, Inc.

• Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1655, Delphi Classics

• Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Artist, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.223

• Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Quality, Excess

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.237, 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

• Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, People, Mind

  "Representative Men". Uses of Great Men. Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1850.

• The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Solitude, Secret

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.398

• The quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the Roman, the Austrian and the American.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Differences, Quality, Egyptian

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.965, Library of America

• The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Race, Quality, Genius

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.775, Modern Library

• In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Talking, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.378

• This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one's actions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Quality, Encounters, Body

• Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health; or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Health, Animal, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2421, Delphi Classics

• I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Respect, Distance, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.256, Jazzybee Verlag

• We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Quality, Paint

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.72, Graphic Arts Books

• Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Power, Reality, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.315, University of Georgia Press

• A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Quality, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.233

• No nation has produced anything like his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, and none in which he has not said the commanding word.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Class, Mind, Quality

• The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Personal Qualities, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “Works: English traits, Conduct of life”

• Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Quality, Haste, Heat

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.217, Cosimo, Inc.

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