561 Famous Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
5/25/1803 - 4/27/1882
Also Known As:
Waldo Ralph Emerson
Waldo Emerson Ralph
Professions:
Information:
About Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech,
the sea which receives tributaries from every region under
heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles
river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
Reading
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Books
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Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for
literature.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Reading
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotation and Originality
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If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what
books he read.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Reading
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotations and Originality
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Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Snow
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Snow-Storm
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Come, see the north-wind's masonry,
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion.
Snow
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Snow-Storm
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Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffered no savor of the earth to escape.
Wine and spirits
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Bacchus (st. 1)
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Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy like to thy neighbor's creed has lent,
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Influence
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Each and All
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We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
Freedom
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Boston (st. 5)
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My angel,--his name is Freedom,--
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.
Freedom
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Boston Hymn
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The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails.
Heroes
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Heroism--Introduction
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If you had taken off the shoe then, at length you would feel in
what part it pinched you.
[Lat., Si calceum induisses, tum demum sentires qua parte te
urgeret.]
Shoemaking
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Letters and Social Aims--Greatness
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Art and power will go on as they have done,--will make day out of
night, time out of space, and space out of time.
Destiny
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Society and Solitude--Works and Days
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Burly, dozing humblebee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek.
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Bees
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Humble-Bee
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Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
. . . .
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
Bees
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Humble-Bee
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The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tablets yet unbroken:
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
Scripture
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Problem
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For the world was built in order
Around the atoms march in tune;
Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
The sun obeys them, and the moon.
Order
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Monadnock (st. 12)
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