Skip to content

Genius Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

135 Genius quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Genius quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Ralph Waldo Emerson sees genius as a practical power that makes work easier and more useful. He says a genius eye looks for design in colors and angles, and that true genius speaks in simple words that hide deep ideas. Accepting and using your own genius, he believes, can turn even a dollar into something valuable.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius is its own end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius appeals to the future.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Genius is religious.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Common sense is as rare as genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Man hopes, genius creates”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius is intellect constructive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius Borrows nobly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When the gods come among men, they are not known.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . .…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Other authors on Genius

More by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The order of things consents to virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am; therefore, I had nothing better to do than to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson