Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Country
Minorities
Surely
Gay
Judge
Judging
Majority
Pedantry
Pride
Census
Shall
Minority
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
No nation has produced anything like his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, and none in which he has not said the commanding word.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The intellect,-that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious from thesleep of passions to their rage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There comes a time in each man's education in which he comes to the conclusion that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society in in conspiracy against each one of its members.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We pass for what we are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
The simplest words,--we do not know what they mean except when we love and aspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him a defect pays him revenues on the other side.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
