Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 151

• No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny, Humorous, Names

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• A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Missionary, Argument, Symbols

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry and Imagination”, p.7, Editora Dracaena

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• The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Rain, Reality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.203, Penguin

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• All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Roots, Vegetables

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.419, Library of America

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• The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Knives

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2821, Delphi Classics

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• I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Giving, Brave, Joy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.229, U of Nebraska Press

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• And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Two, Romance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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• Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Men, Order

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1849). “Nature”, p.2

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• What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle's, and of a rabbit, rabbit's. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Animal, Duplicity

  "Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1893.

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• Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Eye, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.256, Library of America

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• A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jewels, Evil, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1893). “Natural history of intellect and other papers”

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• The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Necks, Monsters

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.175

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• It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faults, Facts, States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.17, Coyote Canyon Press

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• The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Stars, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Nature and the Method of Nature”, p.3, Library of Alexandria

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• Goodness that preaches undoes itself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Goodness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.31, Harvard University Press

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• The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Taken, Office, Patents

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2459, Delphi Classics

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• It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Latin, Sunday

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.21, Рипол Классик

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• A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Stills, Spells

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Fear, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Eye, Tragedy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3240, Delphi Classics

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• There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Pain, Grief

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “The Power of Emerson's Wisdom”

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• I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Honor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.156, Harvard University Press

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• There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Exaggeration Is, Personality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.267, Harvard University Press

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• Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Manners, Exaggeration, Exaggerating

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Exaggeration Is, Generosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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