Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 9

The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

Calmness is always Godlike.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

Only so much of life do I know as I have lived.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

If peace is to be maintained, it must be by brave men, who have come up to the same height as the hero, namely, the will to carry their life in their hand, and stake it at any instant for their principle, but who have gone one step beyond the hero, and will not seek another man's life.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

Whatever limits us we call Fate.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.

The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, -- that we find we have (a common Nature) -- one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.

Whatever you do you need courage. ... To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.

If a man own land the land owns him.

The high prize of life the crowning fortune of man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.

Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.

Quotation confesses inferiority.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

The life of truth is cold.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

We never touch but at points.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening only with his legs.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood or exaggeration in it.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance arms us with terrible freedom so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge yet not the details but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful manly part or a poor drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions they have a substantial truth.

Right Now Is the Time to Be Kind You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Culture with us ends in headache.

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society is wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

To fill the hour that is happiness to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

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