Quote

It is said, no man can write but one book and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

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
Leave
Write
Book
Writing
Men
Defect
Defects
Impression
Performances

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is one soul which animates all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Make youself necessary to someone.
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 Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A weed is a plant whose virtue is not yet known.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel.... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson