Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
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If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as 'spiritual life,' 'God,' 'soul,' 'cross,' etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
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Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
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I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
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To be great is to be misunderstood.
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Every burned book enlightens the world.
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Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care.
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Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
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Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm.
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Blessed are those who have no talent!
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Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
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Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
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I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
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Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities.
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The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
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People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
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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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The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
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Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
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I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.
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So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.
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But these young scholars who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.
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Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
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Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!