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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes about Writing - Page 3

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Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of going in for photography, you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the

"Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photography, Writing, Thinking

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book, Writing, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.363

Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides,and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Fighting, Hot
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.209, Penguin

Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe, Writing, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.152, Harvard University Press

In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through every clause and part of speech of the right book I meet the eyes of the most determined men; his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book, Writing, Eye

The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Creativity, Greatness
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song, Sleep, Writing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.92, Harvard University Press

And dazzling memory revive.Refresh the faded tints, Recut the aged prints, And write my old adventures, with the pen Which, on the first day, drew Upon the tablets blue The dancing Pleiads, and the eternal men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Memories, Writing, Adventure
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.315, Graphic Arts Books

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Funny, Sarcastic, Writing
"Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843".

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . .

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Running, Writing, Years
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.267, Modern Library

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Father, Writing, Self Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, Harvard University Press

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Wish, Rhyme
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1969). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VII: 1838-1842”, p.219, Harvard University Press

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children, Eye, Writing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.256, Library of America

It is sublime to think and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust, Writing, Thinking
Ralph Waldo, Emerson, (2013). “Nature - Conduct of Life”, p.225, Read Books Ltd

After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Brain, Tunes
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1978). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1854-1861”, p.261, Harvard University Press

he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reading, Writing, Men
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.397

All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hate, Writing, Perfect
Journal, May 1849

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom, Writing, Wrens
1870 Society and Solitude,'Art'.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book, Reading, Writing
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.66, Penguin

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing, Skating, Kind
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “Basic Selections from Emerson: Essays, Poems & Apothegms”

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