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History Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

100 History quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All History quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Emerson portrays history as a restless clash between material forces and spiritual ideals, where truth and right slowly emerge. He sees moral law woven through past events, and curiosity about ancient sites as a way to understand humanity’s deeper patterns. Heroic feeling, he claims, is always justified in this unfolding.

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Language is the archives of history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is properly no history, only biography.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The first lesson of history is that evil is good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All history is biography.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Knowledge is the only elegance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our best history is still poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We live ruins amid ruins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The student is to read history actively and not passively.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The student is to read history actively not passively.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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

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The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The merit of those who fill a space in the world's history, who are borne forward, as it were, by the weight…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The poets made all the words and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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