Quote

Imitation cannot go above its model.

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
Imitation
Model
Models
Cannot

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Be yourself no base imitator of another, but your best self.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The picture waits for my verdict it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Good criticism is very rare and always precious.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The house praises the carpenter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson