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Quotes from Letters and Social Aims — Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882 United States

← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

48 quotes

If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

The gods sell anything to everybody at a fair price.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, and no force of character can make any stand against good wit.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master at some point, and in that, I learn of him.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

This world belongs to the energetic.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.