“Le symptôme invariable de la science humaine est de voir du miraculeux dans les choses vulgaires.”
Essai sur la nature ('), 1836
Ralph Waldo Emerson, né le 25 mai 1803 à Boston et mort le 27 avril 1882 à Concord , est un essayiste, philosophe et poète américain, chef de file du mouvement transcendantaliste américain du début du XIXe siècle. Wikipedia
“Le symptôme invariable de la science humaine est de voir du miraculeux dans les choses vulgaires.”
Essai sur la nature ('), 1836
“Qu’est-ce qu’une herbe? Une plante dont les vertus n’ont pas encore été découvertes […].”
La Destinée de la République (Fortune of the Republic), 1878
Solitude et Société ('), 1870
12 February 1851; compare the remark of John Wilkes about Samuel Johnson, "Liberty is as ridiculous in his mouth as Religion in mine" (20 March 1778), quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell.
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
Astræa
1840s, Poems (1847)
Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
“Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.”
Poetry and Imagination
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)
Each and All, st. 3
1840s, Poems (1847)
Variante: I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
“For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?”
Boston
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”
Worship
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
“Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.”
Plato; or, The Philosopher
1850s, Representative Men (1850)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Variante: Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life".
“I hung my verse in the wind
Time and tide their faults will find.”
"The Test", as quoted in Emerson As A Poet (1883) by Joel Benton, p. 40
In Memoriam
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Social Aims
Sometimes condensed to "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)
“There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing.”
Ode Inscribed to W.H. Channing http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/ode_inscribed_to_william_h_channing.htm, st. 9
1840s, Poems (1847)
St. 2
1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm
Boston Hymn, st. 17
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Art
The Snow-Storm http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/snow_storm.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
“Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.”
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”
Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 3, Beauty
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Society and Solitude, Art
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.”
Heroism
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)