10 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Ideas

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on ideas

8. Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

19. Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

44. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

88. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

131. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

174. Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

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

267. Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

276. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

308. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs in another man, it is the key to that era.