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Biography

Quotations

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Quotes



"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end."--Ralph Waldo Emerson



from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance":
"We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents."



A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson



It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." -- Ralph Waldo
Emerson



"The only reward of virtue is virtue." - Ralph Waldo Emerson



Life is eating us up. We all shall be fables presently. Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence. -- Ralph Waldo
Emerson



"The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson



Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882) _Conduct of Life_ `Worship'
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.



"The greatest homage to truth is to use it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson



"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson



"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent. (R. Emerson)"
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to misconstrue all these
misquotations?!?"]



"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)



If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing
multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes
to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of
delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded
spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in
knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself.
The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a
professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson



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? -- Ralph Emerson



The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. -- Emerson



"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." --R. W. Emerson



"Children are all foreigners."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson



"Every hero becomes a bore at last." --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)



"The only way to have a friend is to be one." --Ralph Waldo Emerson



"Men are what their mothers made them." --Ralph Waldo Emerson



"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)



"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual
inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson



"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them
as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your
old nonsense."
Ralph Waldo Emerson



Hitch your wagon to a star.

http://killdevilhill.com/emerson.html

"A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes,
nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by
taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free
himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://www.california.com/~rpcman/etmof.htm

Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Each and All.

2
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I 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.
Ibid.

3
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
The Problem.

4
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
Ibid.

5
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew:
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Ibid.

6
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.
Ibid.

7
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
Hamatreya.

8
Good bye, proud world! I 'm going home;
Thou art not my friend, and I 'm not thine. 1
Good Bye.

9
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
Ibid.

10
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
The Rhodora.

11
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind. 2
Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing.

12
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
Ode to Beauty.

13
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
Give all to Love.

14
Love not the flower they pluck and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
Blight.

15
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.
Dirge.

16
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattl'd farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world. 3
Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument.

17
What potent blood hath modest May!
May-Day.

18
And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
Ibid.

19
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is never wide.
Nemesis.

20
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
Boston Hymn. 1863.

21
Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire.
Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857.

22
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
Ibid.

23
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
Voluntaries.

24
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.
Ibid.

25
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
Solution.

26
Born for success he seemed,
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.
In Memoriam.

27
Nor mourn the unalterable Days
That Genius goes and Folly stays.
Ibid.

28
Fear not, then, thou child infirm;
There 's no god dare wrong a worm.
Compensation.

29
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
Beauty.

30
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill!
Suum Cuique.

31
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
Quatrains. Nature.

32
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,--
"'T is man's perdition to be safe
When for the truth he ought to die."
Sacrifice.

33
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
Boston.

34
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 4
Nature. Addresses and Lectures. The American Scholar.

35
There is no great and no small 5
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.
Essays. First Series. Epigraph to History.

36
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
History.

37
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Ibid.

38
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.
Ibid.

39
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Self-Reliance.

40
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ibid.

41
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ibid.

42
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.
Ibid.

43
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
Compensation.

44
It is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Ibid.

45
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
Ibid.

46
Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds.
Spiritual Laws.

47
All mankind love a lover.
Love.

48
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
Epigraph to Friendship.

49
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.
Friendship.

50
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Circles.

51
There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behaviour yield to the energy of the individual.
Essays. Second Series. Manners.

52
And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish if you will
show me the fountain of the Nile."
New England Reformers.

53
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Representative Men. Uses of Great Men.

54
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? 6
Montaigne.

55
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.
Shakespeare.

56
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
English Traits. Race.

57
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes.
Manners.

58
A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
Aristocracy.

59
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
The Conduct of Life. Wealth.

60
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
Behaviour.

61
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
Ibid.

62
Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
Considerations by the Way.

63
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
Society and Solitude.

64
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Civilization.

65
I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a
good version. 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 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.
Books.

66
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
Old Age.

67
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Letters and Social Aims. Social Aims.

68
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Quotation and Originality.

69
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. 7
Ibid.

70
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."
Ibid.

71
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Ibid.

72
The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century.
Ibid.

73
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world.
Progress of Culture. Phi Beta Kappa Address, July 18, 1867.

74
I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference; no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion
which they professed, whether Arab in the desert or Frenchman in the Academy. I see that sensible men and
conscientious men all over the world were of one religion. 8
Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Preacher.

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/407.html

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have
crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too
high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no
gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Top Top of quotes

Quoted around the Internet:

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and
divines.

Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Perhaps they are.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is
the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing
to trust him with his friendship.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell
you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier
needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed,
but that our power to do is increased.

There is properly no history; only biography.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Essential Literature

Key Concepts

transcendentalism n. 1: A philosophy that emphasizes the a priori
conditions of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of
ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental
reality
2: a philosophy that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and transcendental
over the material and empirical
3: the quality or state of being transcendental
--Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

James Freeman Clarke once dubbed the transcendentalists the "club of the likeminded; I suppose because no two of us think alike." But despite the disagreement among transcendentalists themselves, the overall movement shared similar philosophies.   These philosophies rested on the Lockean concept of Idealism and Kant's belief in intuition. In other words, transcendentalism
opposed empiricism, which is gaining knowledge from experience. Physical world observations were only appearances of reflections of the spirit. One should learn of the spiritual world through reason alone, thus guiding one towards the ultimate goal, Absolute Truth. Transcendentalists stressed the importance of self-reliance (see "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson) in order to access the one divine Oversoul. These philosophies largely reflect the Neoplatonic philosophy of the ancient Greeks.

In application, American transcendentalism urged a reform in society, and that such a reform may be reached if individuals resist customs and social codes, and rely rather on reason to learn what is right. Ultimately, transcendentalists believed that one should transcend society's code of ethics and rely on personal intuition in order to reach absolute goodness, or Absolute Truth.

http://library.advanced.org/12160/philosophy/trans.htm

Bibliography

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

The American Transcendentalists, Their Prose and Poetry.
Perry, Ed. Miller / Published 1957

Source References, Notations & Credits

Most of the information contained here is an amalgam of materials acquired via the Internet.

Some of this information is accredited and some of it is incorporated into text body.

All sources, however, are noted included in the Bibliography and Links sections.

Notes:

Emerson: "American essayist, poet, and thinker. A deeply spiritual but independent man, Emerson taught that each man must think for himself", and "The passive master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned" (the quote on his gravestone).

Quotes from Emerson's writings:

 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

here once the embattled farmers stood,
and fired the shot heard round the world"  (Concord)

 

"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force that rules the world",

 

"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one",

 

"whoso would a man be a non-conformist",

"hitch your wagon to a star",

 

"the less government we have, the better"

(and a long quote from his Essay on Self-Reliance).

 

http://st1.yahoo.com/genius/emerson.html