Ralph Waldo Emerson Intellectual Quotations

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.

A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.

We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve.

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his.

Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.