Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Miss Austen’s novels … seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is, for the time, the history of the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Better that the book should be not quite so good, and the writer better, and not himself a ridiculous contrast to all… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share