Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.

O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

Thought began to take over and obscured the simple yet profound joy of connectedness with being.

I have remained a simple fellow who asks nothing of the world; only my youth is gone - the enchanting youth that forever walks on air.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

The spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling, or artful play of little lights, or an attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the whole work, to which a breadth of uniform and simple color will very much contribute.

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all.

All the truly deep people have at the core of their being the genius to be simple or to know how to seek simplicity

Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.

When I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.

It is better to use this available energy for your observation, inner observation. Just watch everything - and it is good because you have nothing much to do. You have not to go here and there and visit people and become a member of the Rotary Club. You are saved from so much nonsense that I felt really jealous of you! Enjoy it! And feel sorry for everybody else! They are poorer and you can become immensely rich. And the art of that richness is witnessing. Witnessing is another name for meditation.

If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple.

I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box.

Just as a poet often has license from the rules of grammar and pronunciation, we should like to ask for 'physicists' license from the rules of mathematics in order to express what we wish to say in as simple a manner as possible.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.