The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought - Ralph Waldo Emerson
All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature: I give to thee for thy defence Thy formidable innocence. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We aim above the mark to hit the mark. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
God enters by a private door into every individual. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom! - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work is victory. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Scatter joy! - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love, and you shall be loved. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the single man plants himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abides, this huge world will come around to him. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pure by impure is not seen. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt 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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail? - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature.... It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now everyone must do after his kind, be he asp or angle. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man I meet is in some way my superior. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We become what we think about all day long. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is properly no history, only biography. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely... - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things refuse to be mismanaged for long. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be good to your work, your word, and your friend. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A scholar is the favorite of Heaven and of earth; The excellence of one's country, The happiest of mankind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The years teach much the days never know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The very thought of the Diety, Is as bright, effulgent daybeams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Artist always has the masters in his eyes. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courtesy: Wishes not to be loved, but to be lovely; Not to be benefitted, but to be a benevolence. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear always springsfrom ignorance. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty without expression is boring. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the essence of heroism - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are prisoners of ideas. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
No one ever stated their troubles As lightly as they might. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not nail a great star to its track, . . . Tell when to go and when come back;. . . But open up thy heart to know What rainbows teach and sunsets show. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
...the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The less government we have the better. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do what you know and perception is converted into character. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is creative reading as well as creative writing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
People only see what they are prepared to see. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our life is not so much threatened, As our perception. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give all to love; obey thy heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every artist was first an amateur. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To think is to act. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world belongs to the energetic. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We acquire the strength we have overcome. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In every work of genius we see our own rejected thoughts. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Money often costs too much - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The never-ending task of self improvement. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done is having done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person, whatever he says has an enhanced value. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For each new morning with its light,For rest and shelter of the night,For health and food, for love and friends,For everything Thy goodness sends. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every revolution was thought first in one man's mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The highest price you can pay for a thing is to ask for it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing and you will have the power. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To laugh often and much,to win the respect of the intelligent peopleand the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest criticsand endure the betrayal of false friends;to appreciate beauty;to find the best in others; to leave the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Imitation is suicide. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you strike at a king, you must kill him. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The key to every man is his thought.... He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If he had the earth for his pasture and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy or demon who possesses such power as that.Mentioned inSixty Days and Counting, by Kim Stanley Robinson - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are wiser than we know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the length of life, but the depth. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some books leave us free and some books make us free. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
He is great who confers the most benefits. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be an opener of doors - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever limits us, we call Fate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like 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. . . . - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be th fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life consists of what man is thinking about all day. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting the best property of all -- friends? - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common sense is as rare as genius. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show for any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it. - - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great man is always willing to be little. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Miss Austen’s novels … seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer … is marriageableness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's library is a sort of harem. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward for a thing well done is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To laugh often and much;to win the respect of intelligent peopleand the affection of children,to leave the world a better place,to know even one life has breathed easierbecause you have lived,this is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
a man only knows what he's experienced - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't SAY things. What you ARE stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What a new face courage puts on everything. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all boil at different degrees. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
. . .but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do what we must, and call it by the best names. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
And did you think that such a guest Would in thy hall take up his rest? --High gifts ask diviner guess: Not to be conned to tediousness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The faith that stand on authority is not faith. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The First wealth is health. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Books are for nothing but to inspire - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The people are to be taken in very small doses. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent we have discovered afterward that much was accomplished and much was begun in us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.― - Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever you do you need courage.Whatever course you decide upon, there will always be someone to tell you that you are wrong. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tis the good reader that makes the good book. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
She shows us only surfaces but Nature is a million fathoms deep. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
As soon as there is life there is danger. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You become what you think about all day long. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate quotations. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same - Ralph Waldo Emerson
One idea lights a thousand candles. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To fill the hour──that is happiness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The years teach us much, which the days never knew. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only gift is a portion of thyself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The glory of friendship is not the outstreched 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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a melody born of melody, That melts the world into a sea. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Language is fossil Poetry. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every hero becomes a bore at last. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would! - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yes, but does Maine have anything to SAY to Florida? - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always do what you are afraid to do. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Line in nature is not found;Unit and universe are round;In vain produced, all rays return;Evil will bless, and ice will burn. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children are all foreigners. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson