Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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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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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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Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
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In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.
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If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 6.
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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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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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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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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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Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great.
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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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Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
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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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But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year, And a sphere.
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Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
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Music is the poor man's Parnassus.
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The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.
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There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.
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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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In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
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Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, - ''Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.'
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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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The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be the heroic.