Skip to content

Quotes from The American Scholar — Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882 United States

← All quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

14 quotes

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

The American Scholar (1837)

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

The American Scholar (1837)

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

The American Scholar (1837)

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

The American Scholar (1837)

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

The American Scholar (1837)

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.

The American Scholar (1837)

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

The American Scholar (1837)

Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.

The American Scholar (1837)

Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The American Scholar (1837)

The soul is subject to dollars.

The American Scholar (1837)

I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

The American Scholar (1837)

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

The American Scholar (1837)

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking.
In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

The American Scholar (1837)

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

The American Scholar (1837)

Attribution

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