Quote

It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.

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
Men
Wants
Call
Community
Actual
Artist
Fancy
Art
Arts
Power
Serve
Come
Creativity
Never
Please

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We judge of man's wisdom by his hope.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere as to expect poetry from this engineer or a chemical discovery from that jobber.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man is a god in ruins.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it at any rate, brag.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Your work should be in praise of what you love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature is a rag merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson