Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Genius seems to consist merely in trueness of sight, in using such words as show that the man was an eye-witness, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart. — 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
We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world. — 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
