Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Influence
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The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
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Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.
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Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; - and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man ... and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.
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Men are what their mothers made them.
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England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
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Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.
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Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
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Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: 'Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.'
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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.