Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 7

We are reformers in spring and summer in autumn and winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night. Reform is affirmative conservatism negative conservatism goes for comfort reform for truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would lift me you must be on a higher ground.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An institution is the lengthening shadow of one man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We think our civilization near its meridian but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is that which can do without success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good breeding a union of kindness and independence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We change whether we like it or not.
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
Every burned book enlightens the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We look wishfully to emergencies to eventful revolutionary times ... and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it no excess of explanation and it is full of suggestions the raw material of possible poems and histories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we will not find it.
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
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its ends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty without expression tires.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The flowering of geometry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. Christian Bovee A little praise Goes a great ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No sensible person ever made an apology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
America is a country of young men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is time to be old To take in sail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pain indolence sterility endless ennui have also their lesson for you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a man is pushed tormented defeated he has a chance to learn something he has been put on his wits ... he has gained facts learned his ignorance is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People wish to be settled only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat men to whom a crises which intimidates and paralyzes the majority comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man can have society upon his own terms.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Never read a book that is not a year old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.
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
One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred;
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson