Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

A page of history is worth a volume of logic.

He generally speaks about facts, issues, and if he's got a fault in speaking, it's probably that he knows so much about what he's talking about, sometimes he talks over people's heads.

The reality of spirit-matter is inevitably translated into and confirmed by a structure of the spirit.

And what is life? God manifested in the material plane. For it is in Him that we live and move and have our being.

God alone is real, and all else is illusion.

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.

In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts - the less you know the hotter you get.

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only levels, is something that literature cannot decide. Literature recognizes rather the *reality of the levels.*

Christ is the Word of God. It is not in certain texts written in the New Testament, valuable as they are; it is not in certain words which Jesus spoke, vast as is their preciousness; it is in the Word, which Jesus is, that the great manifestation of God is made.

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact — even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means.

Everything that is observed in the physical world has as its source that which is invisible. This means we must surrender to the Spirit and to the invisible part of ourselves. Then learning to manifest is really nothing more than learning to manifest another aspect of ourselves.

Know what you're talking about.

Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

The Warrior listens to the words of certain thinkers.

Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightest word in any language is its word for God.

I don’t have a definition of God, because I’ve never really understood that word. People have different understandings of it and it’s caused a great deal of conflict. If I had to say what would my definition of God be, if I were going to use that word, I would say that this universe has layers upon layers upon layers of compassion and wisdom beyond ours.

What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?

Truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or spin. And it's more interesting.

No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.

A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.

[Science is] the literature of truth.

You have to have wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue to preserve your rights and liberties.