Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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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Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
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If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
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Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
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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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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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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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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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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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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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God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
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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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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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The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
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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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The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
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I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
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What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?
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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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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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There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all; And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.