Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 5

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough

There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of progress.One class lives to the utility of the symbol, as the majority of men do, regarding health and wealth as the chief good. Another class live about this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist and the sensual school in philosophy. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified and these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third spiritual perception.I see in society the neophytes of all these classes, the class especially of young men who in their best knowledge of the sign have a misgiving that there is yet an unattained substance and they grope and sigh and aspire long in dissatisfaction, the sand-blind adorers of the symbol meantime chirping and scoffing and trampling them down. I see moreover that the perfect man - one to a millennium - if so many, traverses the whole scale and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty; and lastly wears it lightly as a robe which he can easily throw off, for he sees the reality and divine splendor of the inmost nature bursting through each chink and cranny.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

Never read a book that is not a year old.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.

Never miss an opportunity of noticing anything of beauty ...

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could some blunders and absurdities have crept in forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

All great men come out of the middle classes.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

All things are engaged in writing their history...Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

You Life is a progress, and not a station.

Go oft to the house of thy friend for weeds choke the unused path.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

All mankind love a lover.

PoetTo mask the fiery thought,in simple words succeeds.For still the craft of genius is,To mask a king in weeds

Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

I can find my biography in every fable that I read.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires ... courage.

The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.

There is properly no history only biography.

We fancy men are individuals so are pumpkins but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language--not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king rich man fairy or demon who possesses such power as that.

A wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interests than it is theirs to find his weak point.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

AH I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Fear always springsfrom ignorance.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Work and acquire and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of question, that the angel is shown.

Line in nature is not found;Unit and universe are round;In vain produced, all rays return;Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer.

We are wiser than we know.

When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless.

Over the inter glaciers,I see the summer glow,And, through the wild-piled snowdrift,The warm rosebuds below.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it he must serve it too.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.