Ralph Waldo Emerson Imagination Quotes

Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is like a hunter, who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness. Love is strongest in pursuit; friendship in possession ... ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All things are known to the soul. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock aswell as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. "Life is a journey, not a destination." Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver the truth: After the torments of the journey, you have been well-prepared for the agonies of the destination. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

Desire is possibility seeking expression. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There never was a strong character that was not made strong by discipline of the will; there never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, - What is truth? and of the affections, - What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessedno other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,
Will it bake bread? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Be good to your work, your word, and your friend. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up! ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is a god in ruins. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some eyes threaten like a loaded and levelled pistol, and others are as insulting as hissing or kicking; some have no more expression than blueberries, while others are as deep as a well which you can fall into. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virtue runs before the muse,
and defies her skill;
she is rapt and doth refuse
to wait a painter's will. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Ralph Waldo] Emerson believed that any friendship worthy of the name consisted of two essential elements: tenderness, or honest affection not tied to any material interest, and truth, or a willingness to speak sincerely without fear that frankness will destroy the relationship. Simply agreeing with everything someone says is a sign not of friendship but of insincerity. 'Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo,' he writes. Friendship should be 'an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which, beneath these disparities, unites them. ~ Michael Austin

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is, essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him and his own, patent. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson