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Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.”

Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Book:Essays, lectures and orations

Work

Essays, lectures and orations

This book compiles a diverse range of essays, lectures, and orations, showcasing the intellectual discourse and thought leadership of the contributors across different fields and topics. more

Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American essayist, poet, and philosopher. Born on May 25, 1803, and died on April 27, 1882. Known for his transcendentalist philosophy, his works have had a profound impact on literature and the intellectual world. more

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“Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.”

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Book:Essays and Lectures

Source: Essays and Lectures

“Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.”

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Book:The Portable Emerson: New Edition

Source: The Portable Emerson: New Edition

“Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.”

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Book:Emerson in His Journals

Source: Emerson in His Journals

“The goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it subserves;such as we see in the sexual attraction.”

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Book:Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life

Source: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life

“It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.”

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Book:Emerson in His Journals

Source: Emerson in His Journals

“In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more ofthese drones perish, the better for the hive.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations

Source: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations

“The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”

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Book:Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of histuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows.”

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Book:The Conduct of Life

Source: The Conduct of Life

“A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.”

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Book:The Conduct of Life

Source: The Conduct of Life

“We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if webelieved in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)