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No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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
Understands
Understanding
Truth
Men
Contended
Subjectivity
Objectivity
Thoroughly
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man has a vocation. The talent is the call.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character teaches above our wills.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is the end of human life? It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is likewise to make a fortune, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
