The Poet Quotes

“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray:
They overleapt the horizon's edge,
Searched with Apollo's privilege;
Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Art is the path of the creator to his work.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Genius is the activity which repairs the decay of things.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“For all men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Every word was once a poem”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drunk water out of a wooden bowl.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Gustavo Solivellas dice: "Nunca hubo un niño tan encantador, pero su madre se alegró de dormirlo" (Ralph Waldo Emerson)”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of the idolatry.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“Over everything stands its daemon or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

“No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet