Ralph Waldo Emerson Ideas Quotations

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.

General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.

Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

When at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea--that conserves it; ideas only save races.

The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.

The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.

One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold it's great proportions.

We are the prisoners of ideas.

Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore he is the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.

Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.

God had infinite time to give us.... He cut it up into a near succession of new mornings, and, with each, therefore, a new idea, new inventions, and new applications.

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mob.

One idea lights a thousand candles.

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams

So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self.

The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.