Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear this morning brings The outrage of the poor.

I suppose you could never explain to the most ingenous molusk that such a creature as a whale existed.

Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate.

Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.

The true ship is the ship builder.

Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All

All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.

The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.

An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

A man should carry nature in his head.

Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.

There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?

Repose and cheerfulness is the badge of the gentleman; repose in energy.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

A moment is a concentrated eternity.

The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets.

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.

Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.

It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.

I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was a disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

It really is considered one of the blessings of previous mates which you could manage being silly with them.

The soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither property nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!

When the night is darkest, the stars come out.

The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

It is a luxury to be understood.

The universe is represented in every one of it's particles. Everything is made of one hidden stuff. The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God appears with all His parts in every moss and cobweb.

Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.