Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 11

There is always a best way of doing everything if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness whether it be to make baskets or broadswords or canals or statues or songs.

Money often costs too much

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.

A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Passion though a bad regulator is a powerful spring.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

To be simple is to be great.

Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you the society of your contemporaries the connection of events.

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.

One idea lights a thousand candles.

Courage consists of the power of self-recovery.

I wish to say what I think and feel today with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

That law of nature whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. The bread he eats is first strength and animal spirits; it becomes, in higher laboratories, imagery and thought; and in still higher results, courage and endurance. This is the right compound interest; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, centupled; man raised to his highest power. The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation and not in augmenting animal existence.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe can we not take the leap?

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

Language is fossil poetry

The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.

Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

To fill the hour──that is happiness.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.

The earth laughs in flowers.

Love, and you shall be loved.

Scatter joy!

Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed?

Give all to love obey thy heart.

The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.

All men are poets at heart.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world I thank God I am alive.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is brave five minutes longer.

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

As a man thinketh so is he and as a man chooseth so is he.

Imitation cannot go above its model.

The world belongs to the energetic.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.