Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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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Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
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Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.
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The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
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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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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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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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The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
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Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
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A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.
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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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Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
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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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None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.
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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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The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.
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Whatever limits us we call Fate.
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Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
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Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
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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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Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
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The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.