Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 4

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors Landor replies "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity but in being uninteresting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power which resides in man is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The peace of the man who has foresworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace but a canting impotence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one's self?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich who want something more that of the sick who want something different and that of the traveler who says "Anywhere but here."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A day is a miniature eternity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
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
To fill the hour that is happiness to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring they carry them as silently away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king rich man fairy or demon who possesses such power as that.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who loses a day loses life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
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
Obedience alone gives the right to command.
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
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is saturated with deity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world I thank God I am alive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is too thin a screen the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry she carries them
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poverty Frost Famine Rain Disease are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
God had infinite time to give us.... He cut it up into a near succession of new mornings and with each therefore a new idea new inventions and new applications.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shall we judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By the minority surely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out and such as are out wish to get in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is a piece of the universe made alive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work and acquire and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To believe in luck ... is skepticism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck wise and strong men in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All mankind love a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I can find my biography in every fable that I read.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man having once shown himself capable of original writing is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.
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
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Out of sleeping a waking Out of waking a sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson