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Ralph Waldo Emerson on Christmas

1803–1882 United States

← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

14 quotes

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The Method of Nature (1841)

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.

Society and Solitude (1870)

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love.

Essays (1876)

A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.

May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Journals (1822)

And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is ever wide.

May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

Journals (1822)

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

Poems (1847)

Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,—
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.

The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
His blinding light
He flingeth white
On God's and Satan's brood,
And reconciles
By mystic wiles
The evil and the good.

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Attribution

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