Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 124

• Life only avails, not the having lived.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Life Changing, Inspire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.126, Penguin

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• Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Men, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Harvard University Press

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• The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Religion, Atheism

  Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, March 04, 1831.

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• Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mistake, Expression, Description

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2580, Delphi Classics

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• Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Political, Individuality

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• Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Statistics, Opinion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1972). “Early Lectures: 1838-1842”, p.146, Harvard University Press

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• The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Hero, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2316, Delphi Classics

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• Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Photography, Average, May

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• Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Artist, Quality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.223

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• The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Marriage, Design, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.151

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• Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
  With sudden passion languishing,
  Teaching barren moors to smile,
  Painting pictures mile on mile,
  Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
  Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Teaching

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.163

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• Perhaps love is only the highest symbol of friendship, as all other things seem symbols of love.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Romantic Love, Love Is, Perhaps Love

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.106, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• The effect of the indulgence of human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Exhilaration, Affection

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• The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, Views, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.161

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• Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Power, Past, Transition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Only to youth will spring be spring.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Children, Spring

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.237, Delphi Classics

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• God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Awkward, Forgiving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2397, Delphi Classics

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• Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Music, Men, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3208, Delphi Classics

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• Throughout the ages there have always been those who have been willing to go beyond the norms and reach for that unknown and distant star.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Teaching, Learning

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• Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gun, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.522

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• In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Talking, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.378

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• Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declares all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Insulting, Doe, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.94, Penguin

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• I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Weed, Home

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Men, Sick

  Essays, Second Series "New England Reformers" (1844)

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• The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Long, Understanding

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.170, Modern Library

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