Poetry Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

“Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”

“The South-wind brings”

“Love, and you shall be loved.”

“Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.”

“A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss.”

“Our”

“There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.”

“When you were sleeping on the sofa”

“Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.”

“What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.”

“The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?”