Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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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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All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.
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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?
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Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate.
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A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
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I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.
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Blessed are those who have no talent!
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All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
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Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.
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The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
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The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech.
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Self-trust is the first secret of success.
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Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
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There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all; And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.
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A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
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Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home: Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
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For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
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And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
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There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, - now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.