Ralph Waldo Emerson: Trending quotes

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Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1454 quotes88 likes

“Nothing can be preserved that is not good.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Praise of Books (1860)

“Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

“Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series
Variant: Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

“A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

“Act, if you like,—but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Goethe; or, the Writer” p. 271
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“There is no knowledge that is not power.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Old Age
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

“Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

27 June 1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits, Aristocracy
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nature

“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass
From these companions power and grace.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Woodnotes II http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/wood_notes_ii.htm, st. 4 <br class="br">1840s, Poems (1847)

“Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

St. 2 <br class="br">1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm

“Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Rhodora http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/rhodora.htm <br class="br">1840s, Poems (1847)

“If the colleges were better, if they … had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, — if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, — we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Celebration of Intellect (1861)