Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 148

• The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.10, Xist Publishing

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• 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

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• The life of man is a self-evolving circle.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Self

  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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• Life is a search after power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Power, Life Is

  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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• He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Self Reliance, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.129, Penguin

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• Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Dark, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

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• We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Surplus, Nations

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.340, Penguin

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• We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Desire, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.125, Harvard University Press

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• Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Nature

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• The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew: The conscious stone to beauty grew.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Christian, Rome

  "The Problem" l. 19 (1847)

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• The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Use, Delight, Parks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Orations and Lectures”

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• Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself especially how you choose to think about your situation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gratitude, Thinking, Situation

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• The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, College, Thinking

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• If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Order, Racist, Accepting

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.26, Harvard University Press

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• Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Hero, Saint

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “The Power of Emerson's Wisdom”

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• Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Affection, Caught

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.157

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• Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Simple, Simplicity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.256, University of Georgia Press

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• There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Simple, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• 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

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• What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, School, College

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• The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Men, Keys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.344

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• The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Costumes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.86, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Plato, Philosophy, Men

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• Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Mind, Lenses

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.6

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• Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Taste, Temper

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1963). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.64, Harvard University Press

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