The American Scholar Quotes

“The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, - to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Books are the best type of influence of the past...Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, ⎯ is it not the age of Revolution; when
the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar Self-Reliance Compensation

“The ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

“and, of course, the self-accursation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

“Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Good books replace the best universities.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

“O yüzden, baht, kader denilen her şeyden tamamıyla yararlanın. Çoğu insan onunla kumar oynar, ne varsa kazanır ve hepsini kaybeder çarkı döndükçe. Ancak haksız kazanç olduğu için bunları terk edin, sebep ve sonuçla ilgilenin, Tanrı'nın vaizleridir onlar. İradeyle çalışıp kazanın, talihi, kaderi, çarkıfeleği zincire vurun, onun dönmesinden korkmadan oturursunuz böylece. Siyasi bir zafer, kiraların artışı, hasta arkadaşının iyileşmesi ya da uzakta olan arkadaşının dönüşü ya da başka güzel bir olay, seni neşelendirir ve senin için iyi günlerin geleceğini düşünürsün. İnanma buna. Sana senden başka hiçbir şey huzur veremez. İlkelerin zaferinden başka hiçbir şey sana huzur veremez." s. 64”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Kendimize güvenme konusunda gözümüzü korkutan bir başka dehşet kaynağı da tutarlılığımız, geçmişte yaptıklarımıza ve söylediklerimize duyduğumuz derin saygıdır. Zira başkalarının gözleri, yaptıklarımızı hesap etmek için geçmişteki hareketlerimizden başka bir veriye sahip değildir ve bizler de onları hayal kırıklığına uğratmayı hiç mi hiç istemeyiz. Peki neden sağduyu sahibi olmanız gerekiyor ki? Öyle ya da böyle insan içinde söyledikleriniz ile çelişmeyin diye neden hafızanızın cesedini sürükleyesiniz ki? Geçmişi bin gözlü şimdi tarafından yargılamak ve yeni bir günde yaşamak yerine, salt hafızayla ilgili hallerde dahi, tek başına hafızaya asla güvenmemek neredeyse bilgeliğin kuralı gibi görünüyor. Kendi metafizik anlayışınıza göre, Tanrı'ya bir kişilik vermeyi reddettiniz, ancak ruhun içtenliği ortaya çıkınca, kalbi ve canı ona bırakınız, zira Tanrı'yı şekle ve renge büründürecektir. Nazariyenizi bir kenara bırakınız, tıpkı Yusuf'un, gömleğini kadına bıraktığı gibi ve kaçınız. Ahmakça tutarlılık, küçük akılların gulyabanisidir, küçük devlet adamları, filozoflar ve ilahiyatçılar ise tapar ona. Tutarlılıkla yüce bir ruhun yapacağı kesinlikle hiçbir şey yoktur. Duvardaki gölgesiyle ilgilenir. Şu an ne düşündüğünü ağır sözlerle ifade et, yarın da yine düşündüğünü ağır sözlerle ifade et, bugün söylediğin her şeyle çelişse bile. Ah, o zaman kesin yanlış anlaşılacaksın. Yanlış anlaşılmak o kadar kötü bir şey mi ki? Pisagor yanlış anlaşılmıştı, Sokrates de, İsa da, Luther de, Kopernik de, Galileo ve Newton da, ete bürünmüş her saf ve bilge ruh da yanlış anlaşılmıştı. Büyük olmak yanlış anlaşılmaktır." s.44-45”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Bir tehdit karşısında tazelenen insanlar vardır. Tutum ve tasarruf melekelerini değil; anlayış, sabitlik, özveriye hazır olma gibi özellikleri şart koşarak, çoğunluğu korkutan ve felç eden bir buhran, bu insanlara tıpkı gelinleri gibi güzel ve sevilesi gelir. s.178”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its owns books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of the mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“I would not be hurried … to underrate the Book. … As the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge… I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

“The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth, — learn the amount of this influence more conveniently, — by considering their value alone.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

“let him look into [fear's] eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, - see the whelping of this lion, - which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar: Self-Reliance, Compensation

“Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR