Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 167

• Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Law, Giver, Intellect

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.229, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,--this is the mark and character of intelligence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Able, Mark

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841). “Essays”, p.231

  4 Copy quote

• The intelligent have a right over the ignorant; namely, the right of instructing them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Intelligent, Ignorant, Intelligence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.237, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• It is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far as then need is.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Copying, Needs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.260, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

• Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Thrones, Chairs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.522, Library of America

  10 Copy quote

• There is no God dare wrong a worm.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Worms, Dare, There Is No God

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.284, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Boston, Cows, Wells

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.379

  8 Copy quote

• It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860). “Power, Wealth, Illusions”, p.76

  4 Copy quote

• In England every man you meet is some man's son; in America, he may be some man's father.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Son, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.153, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Library, Morocco

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.65, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Men, Today Life

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.131, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mean, Doe, Deeds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.77, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, People, Selfishness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

  8 Copy quote

• The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much impression.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Greatness, Men, Events

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.98, Graphic Arts Books

  4 Copy quote

• We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Poetry, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.480, Library of America

  10 Copy quote

• And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fire, Poetry, Unattainable

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.83

  4 Copy quote

• Great is the art,
  Great be the manners, of the bard.
  He shall not his brain encumber
  With the coil of rhythm and number;
  But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
  He shall aye climb
  For his rhyme.
  "Pass in, pass in," the angels say

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Angel, Numbers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4360, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• The rhyme of the poet
  Modulates the king's affairs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Poetry, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.144, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Creativity, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1619, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Sweet, Heart

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.110, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1624, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Exercise, Poetry, Humanity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Natural Abundance: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Guide to Prosperity”, p.184, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Expression, Skills

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.27, U of Nebraska Press

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville

Ralph Ellison