Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Writing

• Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.17, Harvard University Press

• Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Heart, Optimistic

• There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Reading, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.233, Harvard University Press

• All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Stolen

• The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

• The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Character, Men

• The virtue of books is to be readable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Virtue

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.339, Harvard University Press

• Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Skating, Kind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1992). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.180, University of Missouri Press

• 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)

• Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Men

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

• Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Birthday, Book, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.65, Penguin

• If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Quoted in Decatur (Ill.) Daily Republican, 19 May 1882.

• The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Land, Steps

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.561, Harvard University Press

• People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny, Sarcastic, Writing

  "Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843".

• I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope that it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Brother, Father

  "Self-Reliance". Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, en.wikisource.org. 1847.

• But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1921). “Representative men. Miscellanies”

• He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Eternity, Eternal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1320, Delphi Classics

• Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Writing, Lines

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.413

• In good writing, words become one with things.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Writing Words, Good Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1992). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.376, University of Missouri Press

• The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Writing, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.201, Penguin

• It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Passion, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”, p.58, Harvard University Press

• Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Art, Inspirational Life

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.526, Harvard University Press

• The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Arrows, Body

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.400, Harvard University Press

• To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Writing, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.9, Library of America

• For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Air, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.187, Penguin

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