Quote

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.

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
Thought
Foot
Men
Finds
Thinking
Track
Thinks
Traverses
Field
Traverse
Fields
Irrespective
Feet
Happily
Else
Spontaneous

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If you don't ride in the rain, you don't ride.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are the prisoners of ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Education should be as broad as man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I quote another man's saying unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The have a good friend is one of the greatest delights of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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
Image
The Soul rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a mistis absorbed into the heat of the Sun--but the soul is the kingdom of God, the abode of love, of truth, of virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
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 value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for thesalvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson