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

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”

“The foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be th fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time.”

“America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”

“Me too thy nobleness has taught”

“There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.”

“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.”

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,”

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;”

“I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,”

“I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.”

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

“We somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are, to inherit the masquerade of what we will be.”