Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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.
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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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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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You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
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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.
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Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
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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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Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
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Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
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The soul is subject to dollars.
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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.
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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.
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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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God will not have his work made manifest by cowards
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Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
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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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Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
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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.'
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Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
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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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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.
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Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop
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Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.
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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.