Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 75

• An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Answers, Language, Asks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.58, Courier Corporation

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• The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Silence, Suffering, Path

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.298, Modern Library

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• For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, House, Language

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.79, Courier Corporation

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• The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Long, Use, Shells

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.457, Library of America

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• Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Language, Relation, New Words

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.191, Penguin

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• For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Our Words, Genius, World

  Essays, Second Series "The Poet" (1844)

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• The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Records, Gains

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.266, Harvard University Press

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• There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Thinking, Civilization

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1243, Delphi Classics

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• All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ohio, Cities, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.133, Bantam Classics

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• Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Light, Two, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.25, Graphic Arts Books

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• The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Future, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1175, Delphi Classics

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• The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.207

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• But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Past, True Or False

  Essays Circles (p. 297)

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• If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Cousin, Truth, Opportunity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.191, Harvard University Press

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• For he that feeds men serveth few;
  He serves all who dares be true.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Men, Charity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.96, Harvard University Press

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• Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Truth, Light

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.137, Harvard University Press

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• The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, "the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life,--we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Girl, Sweet

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.310, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wish, Experience

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.413

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• Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Believe, Sight

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

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• Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimneyside of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wise, Festivals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.228, Modern Library

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• The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Bud, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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• We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Air

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

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• Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pride, Men, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Harvard University Press

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• The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Brain, Mind, Generations

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.359

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• The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Nature, Stars

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.151, Courier Corporation

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