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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Famous Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

“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.”

MenLifeHappinessSongBornPositiveFortunePursuitEmploymentStatuesPursuit Of HappinessBasketsCanals
Book:The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations
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“Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.”

ThinkingMenWorldLoveMindIdeasDecisionMoneyCourageBedAll ThingsEntrepreneurDinnerInvisibleCharmVenture
Book:The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1854-1861
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“It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.”

MenGivingHeartStatesBrainCourageVirtueHealthyEssenceEvery ManCupsCellsAtomsVesselContaining
Book:The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude
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“...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.”

KnowsMenTwoRealEyeTruthLyingCommunityOpinionFourTruth IsBoundsConformityHandkerchiefsChagrin
Book:Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (EasyRead Large Bold Edition)
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“The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation.”

IfsMenMindMomentsFactsActionPassionProcessLinesWatchesCreationMaterialsCommunicationClothesIntellectualAriseFamiliarSpontaneousDiscourseEarnestImageryRise AboveExaltedLuminous
Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.”

MenFirstsHumorEyeFunnyLanguageOne ThingCommunicationTongueRelyBody LanguageNonverbalLanguage And CommunicationLanguages CommunicationVerbal CommunicationCommunicating With Others
Book:The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life
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“There never was a strong character that was not made strong by discipline of the will; there never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties.”

PeopleMenLongMadeCharacterStrongNationsLibertyVirtueHe ManMastersDisciplineMoralityMarkMoodPreservesSignalsServitudeCapriceSubjectionSubordinationStrong PeopleStrong CharacterDeteriorating
Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.”

ThinkingMenFreedomLibertyPaperVoteIndependenceSlaveDisgustingDeclarationDeclaration Of IndependenceRight To VoteStatutesFlippantPreamble
Book:The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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