Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 10

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

The meaning of good and bad of better and worse is simply helping or hurting.

Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.

Good-bye proud world! I'm going home Thou are not my friend I am not thine.

a man only knows what he's experienced

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

There are some men above grief and some men below it.

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

The South-wind bringsLife, sunshine and desire,And on every mount and meadowBreathes aromatic fire;But over the dead he has no power,The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;And, looking over the hills, I mournThe darling who shall not return.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.... 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.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

We are immensed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.

An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, —"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances 100 things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom!

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well half an hour?

Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.

Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

To Be is to live with God.

Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Out of sleeping a waking Out of waking a sleep.

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

Discontent is want of self-reliance it is infirmity of will.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Earth laughs in flowers.

We are reformers in Spring and Summer in Autumn and Winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night.

Language is fossil Poetry.

Character is that which can do without success.

We look wishfully to emergencies to eventful revolutionary times ... and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one's self?

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.

We think our civilization near its meridian but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.

It is time to be old To take in sail.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

America is a country of young men.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

Shall we judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By the minority surely.

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.