"The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 183 of 211)
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"The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his."
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"The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books."
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"Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever."
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"Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance."
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"Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts."
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"This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish."
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"We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves."
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"You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor."
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"Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us."
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"Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit."
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"We might as easily reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves."
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"A party is perpetually corrupted by personality."
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"Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature."
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"A good deal of our politics is physiological."
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"The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted."
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"Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier."
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"The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost."
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"The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work."
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"As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds."
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