Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 10

They should own who can administer, not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give all access to the masterpieces of art and nature is the problem of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Another point of economy is to look for seed of the same kind as you sow, and not to hope to buy one kind with an other kind. Friendship buys friendship; justice, justice; military merit, military success...Yet there is commonly a confusion of expectations on these points. Hotspur lives for the moment, praises himself for it, and despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur of course is poor, and Furlong is a good provider. The odd circumstance is that Hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to be rewarded with Furlong's lands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. 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. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
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
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
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
He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
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
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The years teach us much, which the days never knew.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 little better; whether be 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 the meaning of success.
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
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.
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
Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it
Ralph Waldo Emerson
O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The never-ending task of self improvement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
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
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
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Scatter joy!
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
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
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease.
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
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson