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Quotes from Pearls of Thought — Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882 United States

← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 quotes

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

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Nature is the best posture-master.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Self-command is the main elegance.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Revolutions never go backwards.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old — reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

Attributed Pearls of Thought (1881)

Attribution

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