Ralph Waldo Emerson
American essayist and lecturer (1803 to 1882); began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston; author of essays including Self-Reliance, History, The Over-Soul and Fate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsTruly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 6th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsIt has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 7th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsImitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 8th of 8 in this piece
- 10 months earlier
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Their wordsMeek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 1st of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsBooks are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 2nd of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
Action is subordinate for a scholar but essential; without it thought cannot ripen into truth
Their wordsAction is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 3rd of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
Their wordsCharacter is higher than intellect.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 4th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsWe have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.
↗Miscellanies: Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Phillips, Sampson, 1856)gutenberg.org 5th of 8 in this piece
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