"By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th-century American essayist and philosopher known for his ideas on individualism and nature, particularly in his work 'Self-Reliance.'
- Born
- May 25, 1803
- Died
- April 27, 1882
- Quotes
- 4.2K
- Rank
- #45
Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 29 of 211)
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You cannot sincerely try to help another without helping yourself"
"In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight."
"Every novel is a debtor to Homer."
"The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough."
"The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind."
"I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."
"Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation."
"The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition."
"There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue."
"Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God."
"Children are all foreigners."
"Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart."
"Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances."
"The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even."
"Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired."
"All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first."
"Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is with-held, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer."
"As we grow old, the beauty steals inward."
"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free."