1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.”
Forbearance http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/forebearance.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)
Epigraph to Friendship
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series
Variant: A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
The Natural History of Intellect (1893) http://www.rwe.org/natural-history-of-intellect.html
“And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is ever wide.”
Nemesis
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
“The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.”
Friendship
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series
“God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.”
Society and Solitude
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had written a piece critical of Plato in response to his earlier conversation with Emerson, as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
Heroism
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841)
“In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”
Letters and Social Aims, Quotation and Originality
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship
Considerations by the Way
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Blight http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/blight.htm, st. 2
1840s, Poems (1847)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Prudence
“The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.”
The Divinity College Address (1838) : full title “An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838”, given at Harvard Divinity School : as contained in The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Writings, Emerson, ed. David M Robinson, Beacon Press (2004), p. 78 : ISBN 0807077194
“We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.”
Old Age
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.”
1839
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”
Walter Savage Landor, from The Dial, XII
“What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?”
Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
Plato; or, The Philosopher
1850s, Representative Men (1850)
“Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop”
This adage had previously appeared, identically worded, in Coleridge's The Statesman's Manual (1816)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
“And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.”
May-Day
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Ode, st. 5
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
“Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.”
"The Test", as quoted in Emerson As A Poet (1883) by Joel Benton, p. 40
“Language is the archives of history … Language is fossil poetry.”
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet
“Never read any book that is not a year old.”
In Praise of Books
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.”
Intellect
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.”
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
Uses of Great Men
1850s, Representative Men (1850)
Boston Hymn http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1177/, st. 2
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior
“We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can.”
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
“Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.”
Journal, 328, Nov. 15, 1839, http://www.perfectidius.com/Volume_5_1838-1841.pdf
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
“Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.”
St. 3
1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm
“Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.”
History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship
Variant: A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud…
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Politics
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Art
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Books
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Fear not, then, thou child infirm;
There's no god dare wrong a worm.”
Compensation
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Fear not, then, thou child infirm;
There's no god dare wrong a worm.
“Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.”
Ode to Beauty
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
