Quote

The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.

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
Fear
Consistency
Two
Reverence
Terror
Creativity
Opinion
Undue
Public
Terrors
Creative
Discourage
Living
Discouraging

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affecting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The language of the street is always strong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
To be great, you must be misunderstood
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere as to expect poetry from this engineer or a chemical discovery from that jobber.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness--to love Him in others' virtues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is not the irregular hours or irregular diet that makes the romantic life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Perhaps love is only the highest symbol of friendship, as all other things seem symbols of love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.
Ralph Waldo Emerson