Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 134

• It is the same among the men and women, as among the silent trees; always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be grasped? In persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reality, Men, Tree

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.45, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Order, Rotten

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

  4 Copy quote

• The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jewels, Soul, United States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.310, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Character, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.70, Xist Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone tocount myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Responsibility, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.202, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Spiritual, Taken

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.115, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, School, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Choices, Political

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.857, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• A man should not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Tents, Should

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.240

  4 Copy quote

• Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Giving Up, Rain, Clouds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.217, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ruffles, England, Shirts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “English traits”, p.89

  14 Copy quote

• Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  People, Style, Expansion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.310, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• A seashell should be the crest of England, not only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish ofthe men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, England, Wave

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.212

  4 Copy quote

• A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  May, England, Cleanliness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.48

  5 Copy quote

• What opium is instilled into all disaster? It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction,but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Fall, Suffering

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.228, Harvard University Press

  6 Copy quote

• No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Progress, Experience

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.213, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Perfect, Silence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.192, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Understanding, Age, Liberty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.943, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creativity, Soul, Never Quit

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

  4 Copy quote

• But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed,through which the creator passes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creativity, Doors, Creative

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.87, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Creativity, Greatness

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

  4 Copy quote

• Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Creativity, Reality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1122, Library of America

  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