Ralph Waldo Emerson citations (733 citations, Page 21)

Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59

“Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fable
1840s, Poems (1847)

“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Blessed are those who have no talent!”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

February 1850
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Education" http://books.google.com/books?id=iRAWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Respect+the+child+Be+not+too+much+his+parent+Trespass+not+on+his+solitude%22&pg=PA116#v=onepage, Lectures and biographical sketches (1883), p.116

“Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“I think no virtue goes with size;
The reason of all cowardice
Is, that men are overgrown,
And, to be valiant, must come down
To the titmouse dimension.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Titmouse http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1176/, st. 5 1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Widely misattributed to Emerson on the Internet, this quote is actually taken from Alfred North Whitehead's essay "Harvard: The Future" (The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936.)
Misattributed

“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Snow-Storm
1840s, Poems (1847)

“Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits (1856)

“Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits (1856), reprinted in The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 2 (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870), p. 206 ( full text at GoogleBooks http://books.google.com/books?id=21IRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA206)

“Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Merlin's Song II http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20584&c=323 1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“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?”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

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

“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson livre Experience

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

“There are men who astonish and delight, men who instruct and guide. Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character
1880s, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)

“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introduction 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836)

“A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

“Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and at the same time she arms and equips another animal to destroy it.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson livre Nature

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

“The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

“I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lectures and Biographical Sketches, The Preacher
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)