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Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
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
Cannot
Feigned
Stills
Iliad
Still
Abolished
May
Pretension
Back
Authenticity
Real
Slavery
Never
Wrote
World
Greatness
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge is the only elegance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We learn that God IS that he is in me and that all things are shadows of him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
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
Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
