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When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.
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
Desert
God
Fool
Savages
Language
Helpless
Thought
Fools
Describe
Define
Attempt
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are the prisoners of ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded every sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason visibly stream.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem sheathed in their tough organization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Gods we worship write their names on our faces be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge is the antidote to fear. [especially as fear often stands for false evidence appearing real!]
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned much is to say on both sides,and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
