Quote

Read proudly--put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.

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
Reading
Fault
Read
Author
Believe
Faults
Make
Whose
Duty
Ready
Proudly
Shall
Charmed
Quite
Invariably

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is with a good book as it is with good company.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and...it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path.... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We do not yet trust the unknown power of thoughts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are a transfusion takes place he is you, and you are he then is a teaching and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.
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