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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (303) We sometimes meet an original gentleman who if manners had not existed would have invented them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Gentlemen Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Trespass It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men to put trust in ideas and not in circumstances. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Idea The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish huckstering Trade. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Trade We talk of choosing our friends but friends are self-elected. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Advertising Blame is safer than praise. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Blame Don't waste yourself in rejection or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Against Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you the society of your contemporaries the connection of events. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Confidence The religions we call false were once true. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Religion Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Earth Every revolution was first a thought in one mans mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Revolution For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Freedom What is a man born for but to be a reformer a remaker of what has been made a denouncer of lies a restorer of truth and good? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Reform To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To give of ones self; To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived This is to have succeeded. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Crisis Society is a masked ball where every one hides his real character and reveals it by hiding. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Society People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Literature If I cannot brag of knowing something then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate brag. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Brag Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Conversation To the poet to the philosopher to the saint all things are friendly and sacred all events profitable all days holy all men divine. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Philosophy Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Beard We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Book A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Children He is a good man who can receive a gift well. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Gift There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Beauty Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: All Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance plain clothes old shoes an eye for nature good humor vast curiosity good speech good silence and nothing too much. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Listen Live let live and help live. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Live When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless! Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Quarrels It is most unwise for people in love to marry. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Love Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Enthusiasm There is always a best way of doing everything if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Egg The moment we indulge our affections the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter and no night; all tragedies all ennuis vanish all duties even. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Affection We love force and we care very little how it is exhibited. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Force He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Writing The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Fear This gives force to the strong that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Masses Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Happiness There is no one who does not exaggerate! Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Exaggeration Harmony of aim not identity of conclusion is the secret of a sympathetic life. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sympathy No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Praise I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses mettle and bottom. mettle: spirited bottom: capacity to endure strain Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Engineer The aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone to seed. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Aristocracy Peace has its victories but it takes a brave man to win them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Brave There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich who wants something more; that of the sick who wants something different; and that of the traveler who says Anywhere but here. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Travel The world is full of judgment-days and into every assembly that a man enters in every action he attempts he is gauged and stamped. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Judgment When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Patriotism Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Health Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Hypocrisy In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Ice The world belongs to the energetic. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Energy If government knew how I should like to see it check not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of action every man that is born will be hailed as essential. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Population I wiped away the weeds and foam I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor unsightly noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sea There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Politics Pictures must not be too picturesque. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Picture The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal of the crusaders a crusader and of the merchants a merchant. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Cannibalism Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Money The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sky For every minute you remain angry you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Anger God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you pleaseyou can never have both. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Choice As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Temptation The louder he talked of his honour the faster we counted our spoons. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Honor Wisdom is to finish the moment to find the journeys end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: End Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Truth If a mans eye is on the Eternal his intellect will grow. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Intellect Where there is no vision a people perish. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Vision The more reason the less government. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Less Who can ... guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Who The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Martyrdom Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Illusions Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul to be spoken to be done. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Thought Whatever limits us we call Fate. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Fate The faith that stand on authority is not faith. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Authority The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Depend We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Courtesy We are wiser than we know. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Convince Every man is a divinity in disguise a God playing the fool. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Disguise Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Diamond The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Smoking Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Care Society is infested by persons who seeing that the sentiments please counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists talkers who mistake the description for the thing saying for having. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sentiment These times of ours are serious and full of calamity but all times are essentially alike. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Times We acquire the strength we have overcome. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Strength It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Word I can find my biography in every fable that I read. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Autobiography I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action. An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge August 31 1837. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Labor Talent for talents sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Talent The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Majority What a new face courage puts on everything! Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Courage The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Charity A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Creative Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Job We learn geology the morning after the earthquake. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Earthquake Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Common The human body is a magazine of inventions the patent office where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Body Our greatest glory consists not in falling but in rising every time we fall. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Factory Conservatism makes no poetry breathes no prayer has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude no prudence no husbandry. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Conservative Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Please Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Influence We are always getting ready to live but never living. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Indecision All our progress is an unfolding like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct then an opinion then a knowledge as the plant has root bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end. though you can render no reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Progress The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them than any other country. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: California Though love repine and reason chafe There came a voice without reply 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Safety Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Manners Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar but is a stab at the health of human society. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Lever Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sleep The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Boss As soon as there is life there is danger. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Danger There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Valor We judge of mans wisdom by his hope. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Hope The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Effect As men's prayers are a disease of the will so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Creed That which we call sin in others is experiment for us. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sin A field cannot well be seen from within the field. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: See No dignity no learning no force of character can make any stand against good wit. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Dignity No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Existence Health is the condition of wisdom and the sign is cheerfulness an open and noble temper. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Cheerful Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Trust The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Merit By necessity by proclivity and by delight we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Necessity Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Learn The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues or what we have always esteemed such into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Vice Real action is in silent moments. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Moments People only see what they are prepared to see. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Perception Weed a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Garden The ancestor of every action is a thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Thief Beware what you set your heart upon for it surely shall be yours. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Heart Men lose their tempers in defending their taste. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Temper We are afraid of truth afraid of fortune afraid of death and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Afraid Let the stoics say what they please we do not eat for the good of living but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Easy If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity in which all things are absorbed action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things all thought; the one the many. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Two This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Time Men love to wonder and that is the seed of science. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Wonder Insist on yourself; never imitate. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Self Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Success We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Day For everything you have missed you have gained something else; for everything you gain you lose something else. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Gains For what are they all in their high conceit When man in the bush with God may meet? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: God The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Belief The god of victory is said to be one-handed but peace gives victory on both sides. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Peace You shall have joy or you shall have power said God; you shall not have both. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Error What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Immortality The true test of civilization is not the census nor the size of the cities nor the crops but the kind of man that the country turns out. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Character Every ship is a romantic object except that we sail in. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sailor Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Debt Tobacco coffee alcohol hashish prussic acid strychnine are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Drugs Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Man Every hero becomes a bore at last. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Bore Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Bible Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances a hundred things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom! Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Appearance If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Star Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Democracy I dip my pen in the blackest ink because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Pen Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with your best deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Spontaneous There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Crime The secret of drunkeness is that it insulates us in thought whilst it unites us in feeling. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Alcohol I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow. [Miss C. F. Forbes (1817–1911).] Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Apparel The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful to be honorable to be compassionate to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Compassion That man is idle who can do something better. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Idleness The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Companion No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Law Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course planting corn or writing epics so only it be honest work done to thine own approbation it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Work The world is his who can see through its pretension. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Pretension Trust instinct to the end even though you can give no reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Intuition Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Heaven We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves.... Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Forgive It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Culture A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history and his wants. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Ancestors A good indignation brings out all ones powers. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Hate There is no knowledge that is not power. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Power Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Light We are reformers in the spring and summer but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning and conservers at night. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Age Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Method There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesnt matter who gets the credit. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Credit Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Liberty It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Disease Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at least a rich varnish with which the routine of life is washed and its details adorned. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Repeat We have more than we use. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Poetry Hitch your wagon to a star. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Ambition There is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Accomplishment The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Trifles Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man but men capable of wisdom who being put into certain company or other favorable conditions become wise for a short time as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Wisdom A man is known by the books he reads. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Company Men are what their mothers made them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Mother Fame is proof that the people are gullible. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: False A mans style is his minds voice. Wooden minds wooden voices. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Voice Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Consistent Prudence is the virtue of the sense. It is the science of Appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Prudent Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Volunteer The characteristic of genuine heroism is persistency. All men have wandering impulses fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great abide by yourself and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common nor the common heroic. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Hero Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Future I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Church Obedience alone gives the right to command. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Oath The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Weapons Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants And to serve them ones self? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Independence No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment an endless seeker with no past at my back. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Experience Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Ugly Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.... The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators but names and customs. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Conspiracy We rail at trade but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America and destroyed feudalism and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Business A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Cynic To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Dull If you would rule the world quietly you must keep it amused. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Amusement Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Knowledge Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Brain No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Arithmetic I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them but I seldom use them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Friendship Work and acquire and thou hast chained the wheel of chance. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Chance If a man owns land the land owns him. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Land All history is a record of the power of minorities and of minorities of one. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Minority Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Calamities The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Gold A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Woe Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: New An empire is an immense egotism. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Empire For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Tax The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Good The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel At the creation of light and of the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Creation The excellent is new forever. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Example When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years having been mistaken a thousand times I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me. John Wesley Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Certainty The only reward of virtue is virtue. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Virtue So nigh is grandeur to our dust So near is God to man When Duty whispers low Thou must The youth replies I can. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Duty There is properly no history; only biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Biography Speak with the vulgar think with the wise. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Vulgar Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Quality The music that can deepest reach And cure all ill is cordial speech. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Deep Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed to be simple is to be great. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Simple All persons are puzzles until at last we find some word or act the key to the man to the woman; straightaway all their past words and actions lie in light before us. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Housework The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Opportunity If you would not be known to do anything never do it. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Deeds When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another a practiced man relies on the language of the first. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Language Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Contradict Man is a shrewd inventor and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron wood and leather to some required function in the work of the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Invention Nature is no spendthrift but takes the shortest way to her ends. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Nature Men are respectable only as they respect. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Respect The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature to make water run up hill to twist a rope of sand. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Persecution Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Reality Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Potential The secret in education lies in respecting the student. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Education The power of a man increases steadily by continuing in one direction. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Direction Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Amateur The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Eyes We forget ourselves and our destinies in health and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Sick Works of great intellect are great only by comparison with each other. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Unsorted Wise men are not wise at all hours and will speak five times from their taste or their humor to once from their reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Humor Why should we be cowed by the name of Action? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Action Good bye proud world! Im going home; Thou art not my friend and Im not thine. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Farewell Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Welcome No man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Help Every man is a borrower and a mimic life is theatrical and literature a quotation. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Borrow The world always had the same bankrupt look to foregoing ages as to us. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: World We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Corrupt Whatever you do you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Wrong Extremes meet and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Extravagance Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out; and such as are out wish to get in? Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Institutions Do not go where the path may lead go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Diet The education of the will is the object of our existence. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Will Every man has his own vocation talent is the call. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Country We all live amid surfaces and the true art is to skate well on them. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Life The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Civilization Shallow men believe in luck believe in circumstances: it was somebodys name or he happened to be there at right time or it was so then and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Luck The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war a crusade a gold mine a new country speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Destiny Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Astonish Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Discontent All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Stability There is a crack in everything God has made. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Perfection Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Integrity Earth laughs in flowers ... Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Flower When you strike a king you must kill him. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Kindness Skill to do comes of doing. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Do It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Solitude The man who can make hard things easy is the educator. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Teach The mind does not create what it perceives any more than the eye creates the rose. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Mind The only gift is a portion of thyself ... the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb.... Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Generation Every advantage has its tax. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Competence It is as impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Cheating Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Conformity If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself around your own. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Slavery People with great gifts are easy to find but symmetrical and balanced ones never. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Gravity Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Fact A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Events Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Emotion The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he! Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Acceptance Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city and no man knows what is safe or where it will end. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Generalize Talent finds its models methods and ends in society exists for exhibition and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Arab The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Genius A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Miser Patience and fortitude conquer all. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Patience If we live truly we shall see truly. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Present We are as much informed of a writers genius by what he selects as by what he originates. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Quotations Speech is power: speech is to persuade to convert to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Speak The people are to be taken in small doses. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Public The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer after years of strife has nothing broader than his shoes. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Art We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of idolatry. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Idol When it is dark enough men see the stars. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Enough People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Behavior Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Orthodox By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurled Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Bridge We aim above the mark to hit the mark. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Aim The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Soul Skepticism is slow suicide. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Skeptics A man is a little thing while he works by and for himself; But when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice he is godlike. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Justice With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Shadow A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Change Old age brings along with its uglinesses the comfort that you will soon be out of it which ought to be a substantial relief to such discontented pendulums as we are. Ralph Waldo Emerson Category: Old |
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