Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.

The world belongs to the energetic.

Writing should be the settlement of dew on the leaf.

It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.

But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

The rule for hospitality and Irish "help," is, to have the same dinner every day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. O'Shaughnessylearns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served.

There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.

The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.

The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after.

God will not make himself manifest to cowards

Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.

Be brave enough to do the loving thing.

We find in life exactly what we put into it

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

Such is the active power of good temperament! Great sweetness of temper neutralizes such vast amounts of acid.

The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas.

All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.

The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.

The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.

The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple.

Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.

The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.

Stand guard at the portal of your mind.

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.

And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.

I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.

The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity

A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveler in a very far country.

Go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the entire sermon will go.

Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window; if heavy, it will obscure the light.

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

Grow angry slowly - there's plenty of time.

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?

We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions.

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

The effect of the indulgence of human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.