Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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The world is his, who has money to go over it.
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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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Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the muse; Nothing refuse.
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He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
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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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He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.
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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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Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
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The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be the heroic.
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In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
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Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.
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It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
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Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
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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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Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
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As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
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Nothing can be preserved that is not good.
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The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
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The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.
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The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
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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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Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great.
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In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.
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But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year, And a sphere.