Ralph Waldo Emerson: Trending quotes (page 26)

“I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, — mettle and bottom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits (1856)

Men , Shoe , Horse

“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Art

Art , Sun

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Snow-Storm http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/snow_storm.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Housing

“Men are what their mothers made them.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Graduation , Mother's Day , For Parents , For Mother

“They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt;
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Brahma

Brahma, st. 3
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Singing , Flying

“But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Men , Hope

“Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality

“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 3, Beauty

God , Beauty

“Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Truth , Law

“Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society and Solitude, Art
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Wisdom , Singing , Painting

“Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heroism
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Feeling

“Good bye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good Bye
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Good bye, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.

World , Art , Home

“The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

July 1855
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give All to Love http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/give_all_to_love.htm, st. 1
1840s, Poems (1847)

Love , Heart

“We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Idea

“Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price, — and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price, — is not less sublime in the columns of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state, — do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

Law , Imagination , History , Business

“Almost all people descend to meet.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship

People

“Children are all foreigners.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 September 1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Children

“The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality

God

“A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Art

Art