Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
-
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.
-
Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop
-
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.
-
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
-
Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
-
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
-
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
-
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards
-
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.
-
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?
-
Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches.
-
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
-
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
-
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
-
Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
-
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.
-
The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.
-
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, 'Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.'
-
It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.
-
The cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best That all the wine at once we swallow And lees make all the rest.
-
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.
-
Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
-
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
-
England’s genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.