Quote

It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.

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
Serve
Street
Streets
Fine
Tavern
Called
Taverns
Society
Vulgarity
Soul
Protection
Self
Souls

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him?
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Some will always be above others.
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When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?
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We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Pride eradicates all vices but itself.
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Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
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The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.
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There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.
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When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
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Society, to be sure, does not like this very well it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world he declares all to be unfit to be his companions it is very uncivil, nay, insulting Society will retaliate.
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Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.
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The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advancesto his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.
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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
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We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
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We come to our own and would make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We can never part with it the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity!
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All men are poets at heart.
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He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.
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There is no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth.
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Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.
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It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.
Ralph Waldo Emerson