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Quotes from Representative Men — Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882 United States

← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

13 quotes

He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.

Representative Men (1850)

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

Representative Men (1850)

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

Representative Men (1850)

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Representative Men (1850)

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Representative Men (1850)

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

Representative Men (1850)

The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.

Representative Men (1850)

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

Representative Men (1850)

Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.

Representative Men (1850)

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Representative Men (1850)

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.

Representative Men (1850)

How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

Representative Men (1850)

In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.

Representative Men (1850)

Attribution

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