Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read… — 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
It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and seem tomeasure… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare; but for nothing… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Life loiters at the book's first page,-- Ah! could we turn the leaf. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views. — 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
