Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes, Book Quotes, Writing Quotes

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing Quotes

Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, aman of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Wall Quotes , Integrity Quotes

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Believe Quotes , Smoking Quotes

To believe in luck ... is skepticism.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Believe Quotes , Luck Quotes

The mark of a man of the world is absence of pretension.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Men Quotes , Experience Quotes

Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Men Quotes , Sensual Quotes

[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Truth Quotes , Men Quotes

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Years Quotes , Frost Quotes

We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Theory Quotes , Prove Quotes

Up and away for life! be fleet!- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,- The punctual stars will vigil keep,- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Stars Quotes , Kings Quotes

Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Summer Quotes , Song Quotes

The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advancesto his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Hero Quotes , Mind Quotes

Religionists are clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law... while the laws of the Law, the great circling truths whose only adequate symbol is the material laws, the astronomy etc. are all unobserved, and sneered at when spoken of.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Law Quotes

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Courage Quotes , Decide Upon Quotes

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Positive Quotes , Attitude Quotes

The religions are obsolete when the reforms do not proceed from them.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Religion Quotes , Reform Quotes

He only is rich who owns the day.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Independence Quotes

One thing is forever good; That one thing is Success.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Success Quotes , Forever Quotes

With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Air Quotes , House Quotes

We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes , Running Quotes , Apples Quotes