Quote

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

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
Become
Acquire
Certain
Glasses
Power
Capable
Men
Short
Rubbed
Time
Conditions
Favorable
Like
Wise
Permanently
Wisdom
Electricity
Company
Electric

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Slavery it is that makes slavery freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
This very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The first lesson of history is that evil is good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The course of everything goes to teach us faith.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All ages of belief have been great all of unbelief have been mean.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Tis the good reader that makes the good book a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The language of the street is always strong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone) and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.
Ralph Waldo Emerson