No performance is worth loss of geniality. 'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“As, in useful art, so far as it is useful, the work must be strictly subordinated to the laws of Nature, so… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature.… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
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 Image
