Nature and Selected Essays Quotes

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Walking

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

“Not the sun or summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays