Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.
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There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
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Always do what you are afraid to do.
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I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
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Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
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For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
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Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
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The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
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It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
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A great man is always willing to be little.
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We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
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Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop
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In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.
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Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
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Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
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The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
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I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
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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.
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Power and speed be hands and feet.
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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
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Reality is a sliding door.
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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.
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A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.
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Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.