Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
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When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.
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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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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
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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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A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
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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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Nothing can be preserved that is not good.
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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!
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Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore.
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If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
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Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs in another man, it is the key to that era.
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Oh, tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire.
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I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.
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The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
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I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
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Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
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The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.
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Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
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Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.
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Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
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How can he today’s writer be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.