Quote

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

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
Asks
Performance
Controlling
Understanding
Intellect
Rests
American
Performances
Superficial
Action
English
German
Ends
Adventure
Sincerity
Certain
Fine
Practicals
Never
Wants
Practical
Probity
Public
French
Steadily

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Beware of jokes from which we go away hollow and ashamed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Presently we pass to some other object which rounds itself into a whole as did the first for example, a well-laid garden and nothing seems worth doing but the laying~out of gardens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Books are the best of things if well used if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars merchants have let them give them. Farmers will give corn poets will sing women will sew laborers will lend a hand the children will bring flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature and literature are subjective phenomena every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson