Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
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Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.
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Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
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There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.
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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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When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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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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I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.
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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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And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, 'All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile.'
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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?
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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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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
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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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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
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God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
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Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
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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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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.
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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.