Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?
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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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Blessed are those who have no talent!
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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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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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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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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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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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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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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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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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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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Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
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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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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
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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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Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
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All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
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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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Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
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Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home: Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.