Quote

Language is the archives of history.

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
Archives
Historical
Language
History

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The secret of drunkenness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my enemies. In the smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my temper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself when he loses himself in the crowd when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A Judge may be a farmer but he is not to geld his own pigs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The virtue in most request is conformity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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
Image
Your work should be in praise of what you love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If you don't ride in the rain, you don't ride.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Other world? There is no other world here or nowhere is the whole fact.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson