Ralph Waldo Emerson

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography : American essayist, lecturer and poet.
Born: 1803 - Died: 1882
Period:
19th century
Place of birth: United States

United States

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Quotes

There are two classes of poets — the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To me men are for what they are, They wear no masks with me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson /

Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson /

simplicity

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

poetry

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson /

artist

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in one's own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson /

The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

fact

Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature /

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature /

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson /