Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot be handled. …It instantly dese...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like mu...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~Ralph Waldo...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and purs...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author Bio

  • NameRalph Waldo Emerson
  • DescriptionAmerican philosopher, essayist, and poet
  • BornMay 25, 1803
  • DiedApril 27, 1882
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Poet; Writer; Essayist