Quotes About Emerson

Emerson used India to formulate his philosophy, and India used Emerson to legitimize its ancient wisdom to the modern mind.

Every American who checks the spiritual-but-not-religious box or shuffles off to a meditation retreat is squarely in the Transcendentalist lineage. A surprising number of the people I interviewed, when recalling the origins of their interest in Eastern philosophy, named Emerson or Thoreau as a catalyst.

There is guidance for each of us," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.

Emerson lectured and wrote treaties and essays, and masses of clotted, cabbagey poetry. Reading him is like trying to hack your way through a swamp of creeping verbiage.

I love the fact that it starts from there, and you don't know where it's gonna go. Wait long enough - love will find you. Everything's a surprise. When you think you've got it all figured out... as Emerson said, the dice of God are always loaded.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

There's nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.

Thought is the bud, language the blossom and action the fruit behind it.

Rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual.

How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him ... I see not how it can be otherwise.

Does not… the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound?

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature

Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

evergreen philosophy of Idealism, springing up on American soil.

The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

What is the soul? Commonly, it's defined as an immortal spirit placed inside each person's body by God. But Emerson had a very different understanding. For Emerson, the soul encompasses both mind and heart. It's the ruler of the mind and emotions. The soul

The soul is what knows—and draws us towards—truth, beauty, and goodness. Moreover, for Emerson, each person's soul is only a part of the great, universal "over-soul." He describes the soul as a vast ocean, with our individual souls being tiny inlets into the shore. Individuality is an illusion—really, we're all connected, like fingers extending from one hand.

spent much of the next two years cowriting and editing her biography.  Emerson was a signatory of the "Declaration of Sentiments" of the first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. And in 1855, he attended and addressed the convention in Boston.

Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.