Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Country

• But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Dragons, Principles

  "English Traits".

• The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Character, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.16, Harvard University Press

• I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Country, Travel

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.369

• A garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Country, Mean

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.295

• No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and so ridiculous.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Baby, Witty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.104, Harvard University Press

• Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Land, Squares

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1081, Library of America

• Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Pride, Gay

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2360, Delphi Classics

• It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Journey, Hiking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “Thoreau”, p.21, The Minerva Group, Inc.

• Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Country, Men

• Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Book, Reading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2472, Delphi Classics

• One of our statesmen said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men."

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Men, Said

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.38, Harvard University Press

• America is a country of young men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Men, America

  'Society and Solitude' (1870) 'Old Age'

• The cities drain the country of the best part of its population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, andthe country is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The land,--travel a whole day together,--looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Sex, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1220, Delphi Classics

• Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Children, Flower

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.43, Penguin

• Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Country, Fashion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.44, Xist Publishing

• Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Home, Strange

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2117, Delphi Classics

• Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Clothes, Rights

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.470, Modern Library

• No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Country, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1404, Delphi Classics

• In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Law, Favors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2909, Delphi Classics

• The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, than any other country.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, California, Better Days

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bliss Perry (1926). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.331, Courier Corporation

• Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Devil, Shakers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.349

• Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Country, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.123, Penguin

• A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveler in a very far country.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Children, Sleep

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes (1911). “Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872 [1876] Ed”

• There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Horse, Apology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.268, Graphic Arts Books

• The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Sight, Rome

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.66, Harvard University Press

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