Quote

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Plume
Improves
Improvement
Society
Men

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
America is another name for opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We cannot let our angels go we do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature and literature are subjective phenomena every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
One must be an inventor to read well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid! but to train away all impediment and mixture and leave nothing but pure power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Good nature is stronger than tomahawks.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson