Ralph Waldo Emerson: Man

Ralph Waldo Emerson was American philosopher, essayist, and poet. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1454 quotes88 likes

“Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considerations by the Way
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“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)

“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)

“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&amp;p=c&amp;a=p&amp;ID=20569&amp;c=323 <br class="br">1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

“What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

Shakespeare; or, The Poet
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“Variation: If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Investigations have failed to confirm this in Emerson&#x27;s writings (John H. Lienhard. &quot;A better moustrap&quot; http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1163.htm, Engines of our Ingenuity). Also reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, &amp; Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 25. Note that Emerson did say, as noted above, &quot;I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods&quot;. <br class="br">Misattributed

“A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

“Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Divinity College Address (1838)

“Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man … and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Music is the poor man's Parnassus.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poetry and Imagination <br class="br">1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=category&amp;sectionid=5&amp;id=74&amp;Itemid=149 (1876)

“Every man is a new method.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Natural History of Intellect (1893)

“The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

20 June 1831 http://books.google.com/books?id=jJZaAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=&amp;quot;A+sect+or+party+is+an+elegant+incognito+devised+to+save+a+man+from+the+vexation+of+thinking&amp;quot;&amp;pg=PA386#v=onepage <br class="br">1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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