Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes about Criticism

Blame is safer than praise

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism, Blame, Praise

Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.129, Penguin

Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism, Pieces, Trade

Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.73, University of Georgia Press

Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Healing, Practice, Criticism

Essays (Second series) 'Nominalist and Realist'

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Odds, Criticism, Genius

We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lying, Criticism, Lines

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Orations and Lectures”

The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beautiful, Imagination, Criticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.102, Courier Corporation

Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wall, Rejection, Criticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.104, Penguin

Whatever you do, you need courage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage, Decide Upon, Criticism

Good criticism is very rare and always precious.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.390

The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant.This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sacrifice, Years, Criticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.301

But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thinking, Criticism, Lessons

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.478, Library of America