Quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on perseverance
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"That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on persuasion   

"The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on philanthropists   

"Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on philosophers and philosophy   

"Genius Borrows nobly."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on plagiarism   

"To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on planning   

"Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on planning   

"Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on pleasure
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"It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Only poetry inspires poetry."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets
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"Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on politics   

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"The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"The true poem is the poet's mind."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

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"New arts destroy the old."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Art is the path of the creator to his work."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

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"Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Every artist was first an amateur."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"Artists must be sacrificed to their art."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on art   

"To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on attitude
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"It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on autobiography   

"Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on babies   

"If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on population   

"Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on possessions   

"We have more than we use."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on possibilities   

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"The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on possibilities   

"Every man believes that he has greater possibilities."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on possibilities   

"Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on possibilities   

"Poverty consist in feeling poor."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poverty and the poor   

"The greatest man in history was the poorest."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poverty and the poor   

"The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power
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"Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power
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"The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power