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Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.
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
Good
Receiver
Giver
Intellect
Law
Nature
Better
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For he that feeds men serveth few He serves all who dares be true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who loses a day loses life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat I will not love you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy is the hearing man unhappy the speaking man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem the shepherd, his lamb the farmer, corn the miner, a stone the painter, his picture the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
America means opportunity, freedom, power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We pass for what we are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
