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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

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

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We call the beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good and the heartlessness of the true.
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We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man.
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Good criticism is very rare and always precious.
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But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.
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This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.
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Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.
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No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and so ridiculous.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.
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No facts to me are sacred none are profane.
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There are two laws discreteNot reconciled,Law for man, and law for thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pride eradicates all vices but itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson