Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

LANGUAGE is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degree.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Words so vascular and alive they would bleed if you cut them, words that walked and ran.

when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody;

The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he.

We call it the moral sentiment. As we are, so we do; and as we do, so it is done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing

They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude.

The Hero is not fed on sweets Daily his own heart he eats

The essence of this faith is freedom. Its goal is simply to make us good and wise. Its institutions should be as flexible as the needs of humanity in different times and places.

Life Is a Journey, Not a Destination – Quote Investigator shows it is NOT Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

me; and which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. 'The foundations

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy

This outlook, one that said that American history must be the history of nature speaking through men, not of men shaping nature, became the single most powerful force in American intellectual life in the nineteenth century and shaped some of America's greatest works of literature, such as Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass and Walden, as well as generating an American school of philosophy , to be furthered by William James and John Dewey.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Spiritual Laws," Essays and Lectures . (Library of America November 15, 1983)

Nada es sagrado, excepto la integridad de nuestra alma.

A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

We want the Exact and the Vast; we want our Dreams, and our Mathematics.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

Mikään ei ole kaunista yksinään, kokonaisuus tekee kauniiksi.