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Poetry Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

146 Poetry quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Poetry quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Ralph Waldo Emerson sees poetry as turning fierce ideas into plain language that anyone can breathe. He believes a poet’s birth is a historic moment that announces new truths no one expected. The quotes speak of simple expression, hidden revelations, and a poet’s passionate vision that reshapes ordinary things.

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Only poetry inspires poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our best history is still poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A beautiful woman is a practical poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Language is fossil Poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The finest poetry was first experience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All men are poets at heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A poem is made up of thoughts, each of which filled the whole sky of the poet in its turn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The secret of poetry is never explained,— is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musican, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs.…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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

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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

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Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the…

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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“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world…

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