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.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
Youth
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--The Poet
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He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Enemies
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Translations--From Omar Khayyam
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When Shakespeare is charges 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."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Plagiarism
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotation and Originality
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It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that
a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is
entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at
discretion.
Plagiarism
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Shakespeare
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There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same
state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place;
he is you, and you are he; there is a teaching; and by no
unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the
benefit.
Teaching
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Of Spiritual Laws
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With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. . . .
Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
it contradict everything you said to-day.
Consistency
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Self-Reliance
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Chide me not, laborious band!
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
Asters
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Apology
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I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community
can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we
must get rid of freedom.
Slavery
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: The Assault upon Mr. Sumner's Speech
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Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
Ocean
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Sea Shore
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A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a
thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul,
Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.
History
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--History
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Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should
be an inventor.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Invention
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotation and Originality
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The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale,
their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without
sleep, the day a fear of interruption,--pallor, squalor, hunger,
and egotism. If you come near them and see what conceits they
entertain--they are abstractionists, and spend their days and
nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society
to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of
proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application,
and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize
it.
Students
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Representative Men--Montaigne
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When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it
proved an intellectual trick,--no more. They eat your service
like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel
you, and delight in you all the time.
Service
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Of Gifts
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A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless.
I want to devote my limited life to serving the people
limitlessly.
Service
Quotes, by Ralph Waldo Emerson , Source: Essays--Of Gifts
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