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The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.

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
Play
Bread
Children
Marriage
Work
Ways
Every
Church
Educative
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Society
Largest
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History
Commerce
Men
Government
Nonsense
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Plays

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - Let there be truth between us two forevermore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in the realm and where fame and secular promotion are to be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of all cultivated nations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Whoever is open, loyal, true of humane and affable demeanour honourable himself, and in his judgement of others faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People seem sheathed in their tough organization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never so long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?
Ralph Waldo Emerson