Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be the heroic.
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The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
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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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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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Nothing can be preserved that is not good.
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If eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
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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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Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
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I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
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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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In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
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Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
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Oh, tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire.
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Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
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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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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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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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Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.
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In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.
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A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays.
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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.
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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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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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The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.