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Language Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

98 Language quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Language quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

A man’s speech is a mirror of his self‑judgment, and each word carries the weight of belief. The quotes describe language as a vehicle for ideas, a sea that gathers many tributaries, and a tool that must match what the eyes see. They also warn against empty diction that hides meaning.

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Language is the archives of history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Words are finite organs of the infinite mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Language is fossil Poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Words are alive. Cut them and they bleed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Eyes...They speak all languages.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Words are finite expressions of the infinite mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In good writing, words become one with things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Permanence is but a word of degrees.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What you are shouts at me so loudly that I can't hear a word you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

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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“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practical man relies on the language of the first.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The mystic must be steadily told,-All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with…

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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Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction;…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The language of the street is always strong.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every word was once a poem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

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

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

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

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“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