Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Wit

• We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ice Cream, House, Dessert

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.133, Рипол Классик

• Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hope, Learning, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1136, Delphi Classics

• Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Levels, Welcome

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2602, Delphi Classics

• I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Character, Loss

  "Emerson: Selected Journals 1841 - 1877" by Lawrence Rosenwald (p. 768), 2010.

• 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.

• Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Intellectual, Society, Credit

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

• But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, America, Clouds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.96, Library of America

• Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Century, Wit

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

• Nor sequent centuries could hit
  Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.
  The men who lived with him became
  Poets, for the air was fame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Air, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.240, The Floating Press

• In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rain, Character, Bridges

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.488

• Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honesty, Men, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.37, Harvard University Press

• Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Soul, Conquer

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.25

• Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Years, Gold

  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.58, Harvard University Press

• For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wit, Grain, Folly

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.287, Library of America

• Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Levels, Tongue, Wit And Humor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.86, Harvard University Press

• Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Ice, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.86, Harvard University Press

• Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Clothes, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.184, Library of America

• Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Use, Wit, Live Well

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.445

• Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely thatwhich all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Views, Doubt

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.170, Open Road Media

• True wit never made us laugh.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Laughing, Made, Wit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.81

• The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion; all his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation occasions for the introduction of what he has to say. The favorites of society are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contended and contenting.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Memories, Men

• Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Fate, Beer

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.32, Delphi Classics

• The finest wits have their sediment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Finest, Wit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.414

• I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,--at the end of life just ready to be born,--affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Love Is

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.63, Harvard University Press

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