"Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 151 of 211)
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth."
Read quote
3 likes
"Nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers."
Read quote
3 likes
"Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason."
Read quote
3 likes
"Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, "so hot? my little Sir."
Read quote
3 likes
"The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation."
Read quote
3 likes
"In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect."
Read quote
3 likes
"The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus."
Read quote
3 likes
"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it."
Read quote
3 likes
"The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight."
Read quote
3 likes
"I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me."
Read quote
3 likes
"To be great, you must be misunderstood"
Read quote
3 likes
"The advantage in education is always with those children who slip up into life without being objects of notice."
Read quote
3 likes
"Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims."
Read quote
3 likes
"Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom."
Read quote
3 likes
"But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world."
Read quote
3 likes
"Marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object."
Read quote
3 likes
"The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo."
Read quote
3 likes
"You think me the child of circumstance; I make my circumstance."
Read quote
3 likes
"Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds."
Read quote
3 likes