What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The love of novels is the preference of sentiment to the senses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them… — 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
“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly,… — 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
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides,and, while… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe… — 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
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
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact.… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic… — 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
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
If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight… — 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
Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him… — 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
“Books are the best type of influence of the past...Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each… — 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
