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Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.

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
Facts
Symbol
Nature
Symbols
States
Appearance
Every
Picture
Corresponds
Mind
State
Swag
Fact
Swagger
Spiritual
Presenting
Natural
Described

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends.
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The intellectual man requires a fine bait the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.
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The life of man is a self-evolving circle.
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Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He only is rich who owns the day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If I am the devil's child, I will live then, by the devil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The moral equalizes all enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whipof the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.
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If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.
Ralph Waldo Emerson