Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 2

There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses, --only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.

We think our civilization near its meridian but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.

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.

Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

There are some men above grief and some men below it.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations.

We never touch but at points.

Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail?

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

To finish the moment to find the journey's end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

To be simple is to be great.

Language is fossil Poetry.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

When a man is pushed tormented defeated he has a chance to learn something he has been put on his wits ... he has gained facts learned his ignorance is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent we have discovered afterward that much was accomplished and much was begun in us.

The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild.

If I cannot brag of knowing something then I brag of not knowing it at any rate brag.

We change whether we like it or not.

And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

Never read a book that is not a year old.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive.

Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it. -

When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening only with his legs.

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.