91 quotes
Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.
At Home And Abroad (1856)
I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884)
It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling.
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)
It was thy kiss, Love, that made me immortal.
Dryad Song (1900)
Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.
To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.
Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing.
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)
The work is done through all, if not by every one.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field?
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.
I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
See the wild herd nobly ranging,
Nature varying, not changing,
Lawful in their lawless ranging.
Life Without and Life Within (1859)