Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 38

• And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fall, Loss, Worship

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.85, Penguin

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• The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Anxiety, Reputation, Solar System

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.423

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• The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Past, Made

  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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• I have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Eye, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.156, Harvard University Press

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• Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Growing Up, Violence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1467, Delphi Classics

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• We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Firsts, Causes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1857). “Essays: First Series”, p.56

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• Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Class, Two, Firsts

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

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• Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Writing, Language

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1977). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1852-1855”, p.78, Harvard University Press

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• All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Natural, Nobility, Superiority

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.243

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• Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Politics, Handicrafts, Poisonous

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

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• Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  White, Trying, Dresses

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.406, Harvard University Press

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• The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Study, Resources, Attributes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.206

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• Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Imagination, Soldier

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.132, Harvard University Press

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• Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Ice, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.86, Harvard University Press

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• Youth is everywhere in place.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Youth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.256, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Men, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.178, Penguin

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• The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Lying, Loss

  "The prose works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In two volumes" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2005.

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• Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the keys of our own nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Keys, Two

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• Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Flow, Transition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1979). “Emerson's Literary Criticism”, p.48, U of Nebraska Press

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• Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Thoughtful, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1169, Delphi Classics

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• The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Lying, Thoughtful

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841). “The method of nature: An oration, delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, in Maine, August 11, 1841”, p.7

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• To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wisdom, Time

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

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• It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Wisdom, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.192, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Dream, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.71, Harvard University Press

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• Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Self Confidence, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.134, Graphic Arts Books

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