Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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 sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
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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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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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Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.
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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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Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
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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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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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Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.
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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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Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
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Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
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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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Whatever limits us we call Fate.
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God will not have his work made manifest by cowards
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His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
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Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
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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.
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The first wealth is health.
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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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Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.