Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.

A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.

In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

Labor is God's education.

Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.

Beauty without expression tires.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by redemption of the soul.

It does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never so long.

Beauty without expression is boring.

And yet--it is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, without expression, tires.

We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary.

A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad.

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread