Quote

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

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
Cause
Ball
Causes
Shape
Half
Balls
Phrase
Home
Handle
Solid
Ideas
Carry
Concrete
Hard
Image
Phrases
Argument
Round
Shapes
Rounds

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
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
Our thinking is a pious reception.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The need for a rational consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The Same, the Same: friend and foe are of one stuff the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of form are unimportant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its end which stands related to all things which is the mean of many extremes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The borrower runs in his own debt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Walking has the best value as gymnastics of the mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson