Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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.
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Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.
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I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.
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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
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Coal is a portable climate.
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Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
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Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.
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Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
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Power and speed be hands and feet.
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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
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The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.
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By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
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The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
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Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
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Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
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Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
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I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
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A great man is always willing to be little.
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God enters by a private door into every individual.
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Reality is a sliding door.
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We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy.
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The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
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Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
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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.