Representative Men Quotes

“Every hero becomes a bore at last.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“Great men exist that there may be greater men.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures

“All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, society is a Pestalozzian school; all are teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things, are not long the best company for each other.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote “Not transferable,” and “Good for this trip only,” on these garments of the soul.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“Do what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; I forget the clock.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“The high functions of the intellect are so allied, that some imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so that they have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. The perception of these laws is a kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little, through failure to see them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

“IT IS NATURAL TO BELIEVE in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men