Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 37

• A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that,and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Self, Saint

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• We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and seem tomeasure their own sense of well-being, not by what they do, but by the degree of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid of them by not minding them: if purring and humming is not noticed, they squeal and screech; then if you chide and console them, they find the experiment succeeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your arms contented if you do nothing. If you take a book and read, he commences hostile operations.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Book, Arms

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2955, Delphi Classics

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• I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Music, Thinking, Cities

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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• Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Faces, Facts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.20, Courier Corporation

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• So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Dark, Secret

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• Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Selfish, Pride

  Ralph Waldo, Emerson, (2013). “Nature - Conduct of Life”, p.191, Read Books Ltd

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• There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Simple, Dwelling, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.399

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• I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Evanescence, Fingers, Hardest

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.473, Library of America

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• I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Differences, Age, Ugly

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.317, Courier Corporation

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• Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Profound, Talent

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

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• What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Men, Wind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.86, Courier Corporation

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• Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Numbers, Discipline

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• For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Two, Soul, Facts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.314, University of Missouri Press

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• Look out! Behind you!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stupidity, Looks, Behind You

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• Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen thousand foot mountain... avoid prettiness - the word looks much like pettiness - and there is but little difference between them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sunset, Differences, Feet

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• Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is struck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears so many new tones, all musical, sees in each person original manners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and reads new expressions of face. He perceives that nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine building, if the soul will build thereon.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Expression, Soul, Individuality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2447, Delphi Classics

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• The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Civilization, People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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• Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Use, Wit, Live Well

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.445

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• The finest wits have their sediment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Finest, Wit

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.414

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• But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.74, Penguin

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• Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Brother, Believe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.44, Penguin

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• We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, Men

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• The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doe, Jest, Earnest

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry and Imagination”, p.1, Editora Dracaena

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• It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hands, Doctrine, Wickedness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.335

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• A woman's strength is the unresistible might of weakness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Women, Weakness, Might

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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