 |
(no category)
|
|
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
|
|
|
O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?
-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
|
|
|
Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Ability
|
|
|
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, attributed, no source
|
|
|
People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Acceptance
|
|
|
Accept your genius and say what you think.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, attributed, no source
|
|
|
People only see what they are prepared to see.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, attributed, no source
|
|
|
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Action(s)
|
|
|
Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The ancestor of every action is thought.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are always getting ready to live, but never living.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Adventure
|
|
|
The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Adversity
|
|
|
Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A man is a god in ruins.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Advice
|
|
|
All diseases run into one. Old age.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Age
|
|
|
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Alcohol/Alcoholism
|
|
|
There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Ambition
|
|
|
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
America
|
|
|
In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Ancestry, Ancestors
|
|
|
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Angels
|
|
|
The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Intellect (First Series), 1841
|
|
Anger
|
|
|
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Animals
|
|
|
Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Appearance
|
|
|
'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Art
|
|
|
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The true poem is the poet's mind.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
New arts destroy the old.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Art is the path of the creator to his work.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Every artist was first an amateur.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Artists must be sacrificed to their art.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Artist, The
|
|
|
Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.
http://rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=173&Itemid=210
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life - Considerations by the Way, 1860
|
|
Attitude
|
|
|
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, Goethe, 1850
|
|
|
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Baby, Babies
|
|
|
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.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Beauty
|
|
|
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Beauty rests on necessities.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
-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
|
|
|
Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never sought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame power that brought me there brought you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rhodora, The
|
|
Beginnings
|
|
|
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Belief
|
|
|
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
All the great ages have been ages of belief.
-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
|
|
Books
|
|
|
There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Bravery
|
|
|
Valor consists in the power of self recovery.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
-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
|
|
|
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
What a new face courage puts on everything!
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Business
|
|
|
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent -- for every effect a perfect cause -- and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Censorship
|
|
|
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Change
|
|
|
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Character
|
|
|
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Charity
|
|
|
Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Children
|
|
|
There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Choice
|
|
|
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
City Life, Cities
|
|
|
Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The city is recruited from the country.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Civilization
|
|
|
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Comedy
|
|
|
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Commitment
|
|
|
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Common Sense
|
|
|
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Communication
|
|
|
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Concentration
|
|
|
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The only prudence in life is concentration.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Confidence
|
|
|
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- 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.
http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-1st_Series_02_Self-Reliance.htm
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance, 1841
|
|
|
Self-trust is the first secret to success.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Conflict
|
|
|
We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves...
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are the prisoners of ideas.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Conformity & Nonconformity
|
|
|
One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Consequences
|
|
|
All successful men have agreed in one thing -- they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Conservatism
|
|
|
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Contradiction
|
|
|
Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Control
|
|
|
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Conversation
|
|
|
In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. 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. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don't care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.
http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=220
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Social Aims, 1876
|
|
|
The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Conviction
|
|
|
The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Creativity
|
|
|
That which builds is better than that which is built.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Crime
|
|
|
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Criticism
|
|
|
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Blame is safer than praise.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Culture
|
|
|
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Curiosity
|
|
|
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Cynicism
|
|
|
Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Danger
|
|
|
One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The most dangerous thing is illusion.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Death
|
|
|
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brahma
|
|
Debt / Borrow / Loan
|
|
|
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Deception/Lying
|
|
|
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Decisions
|
|
|
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Desires
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Determination
|
|
|
Every man is an impossibility until he is born.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Diets and Dieting
|
|
|
'Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Difficulty
|
|
|
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Discipline
|
|
|
Self-command is the main discipline.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Discovery
|
|
|
If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Doubt
|
|
|
Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Drugs
|
|
|
Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Duality
|
|
|
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Duty
|
|
|
Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Earth
|
|
|
Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Commodity, Chapter II from Nature, published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures
|
|
Economics
|
|
|
Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Education
|
|
|
I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The secret in education lies in respecting the student.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Effort
|
|
|
It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, attributed, no source
|
|
Ego
|
|
|
The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Emotions
|
|
|
Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists--talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Empire
|
|
|
An empire is an immense egotism.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Energy
|
|
|
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Enthusiasm
|
|
|
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Envy / Jealousy
|
|
|
Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Equality
|
|
|
Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Evangelism
|
|
|
Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Evil
|
|
|
Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Exaggeration
|
|
|
There is no one who does not exaggerate!
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Example
|
|
|
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Excellence
|
|
|
There is always a best way of doing everything.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Exercise
|
|
|
Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Expectation
|
|
|
How much of human life is lost in waiting.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Experience
|
|
|
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The more experiments you make the better.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.
http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-2nd_Series_2_Experience.htm
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays Experience, 1844
|
|
Eyes
|
|
|
The eye is easily frightened.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Face, Faces
|
|
|
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Facts
|
|
|
If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Faith
|
|
|
Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The course of everything goes to teach us faith.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fame
|
|
|
Fame is proof that the people are gullible.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fanaticism
|
|
|
The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Farming
|
|
|
The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fashion
|
|
|
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fate & Destiny
|
|
|
Whatever limits us we call fate.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fear
|
|
|
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Fear always springs from ignorance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Flowers
|
|
|
Earth laughs in flowers.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Food
|
|
|
I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Fortune
|
|
|
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Freedom
|
|
|
Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
So far as a person thinks; they are free.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
My angel, - his name is Freedom,
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west.
And fend you with his wing.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/186302/emerson
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Boston Hymn, "The Atlantic Monthly", February, 1863
|
|
Friends
|
|
|
What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=161
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays Friendship, 1841
|
|
|
He who has a thousand friends
Has not a friend to spare,
While he who has one enemy
Shall meet him everywhere.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched.
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series, 1841
|
|
|
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
-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 glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in 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
|
|
|
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Funerals
|
|
|
The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Generosity
|
|
|
It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Genius
|
|
|
Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The greatest genius is the most indebted person.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
-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
|
|
|
Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
-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
|
|
|
A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Gentlemen
|
|
|
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman -- repose in energy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Gifts
|
|
|
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Goals
|
|
|
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
God
|
|
|
'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The dice of God are always loaded.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There is a crack in everything God has made.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from
|
|
Goodness
|
|
|
It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Gossip
|
|
|
We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Government
|
|
|
The less government we have the better.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Greatness & Great Things
|
|
|
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
-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
|
|
|
The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Grief, Grieving
|
|
|
The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Guests
|
|
|
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Happiness
|
|
|
To fill the hour -- that is happiness.
-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
|
|
|
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Health
|
|
|
Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness -- an open and noble temper.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Heart
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Heaven
|
|
|
Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Help
|
|
|
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Heroes/Heroism
|
|
|
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual
http://www.bartleby.com/5/107.html
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and English Traits Heroism, 1841
|
|
History
|
|
|
Our best history is still poetry.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Honesty
|
|
|
It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Honor
|
|
|
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Humanity
|
|
|
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Humor
|
|
|
There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.
-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
|
|
Hypocrisy
|
|
|
At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Ideas
|
|
|
We are prisoners of ideas.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Identity
|
|
|
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Ignorance & Stupidity
|
|
|
The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is -- Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Imagination
|
|
|
What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and our sentiments.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Immortality
|
|
|
Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Independence
|
|
|
The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Individuality
|
|
|
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Inheritance
|
|
|
Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Inspirational
|
|
|
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.
-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
|
|
Instinct
|
|
|
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Integrity
|
|
|
In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Intelligence
|
|
|
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Intuition
|
|
|
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Inventing, Inventions
|
|
|
Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Invervention
|
|
|
Everything intercepts us from ourselves.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Kindness
|
|
|
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Knowledge
|
|
|
I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Language
|
|
|
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Language is the archives of history.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Law
|
|
|
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.
-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 own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Laziness
|
|
|
That man is idle who can do something better.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Leadership
|
|
|
Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which he leads us. What indemnification is one great man for populations of pigmies! Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We have become underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help;- other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even, I pray you, let me never hear that man's name again. They cry up the virtues of George Washington,- Damn George Washington! is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and confutation. But it is human nature's indispensable defense. The centripetence augments the centrifugence. We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Volume IV - Representative Men Uses of Great Men, 1850
|
|
Learning
|
|
|
The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear,
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life, 1860
|
|
|
In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption --pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Legacy
|
|
|
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There is properly no history; only biography.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Liberty
|
|
|
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn
|
|
Libraries
|
|
|
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A man's library is a sort of harem.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Life
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
If we live truly, we shall see truly.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Life too near paralyses art.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Live, let live, and help live
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
-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
|
|
Light
|
|
|
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Loneliness
|
|
|
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Love
|
|
|
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
-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
|
|
|
How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Love Essays: First Series, 1841
|
|
|
It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, (on meeting Lydia Jackson, who was to be his second wife)
|
|
|
The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Luck
|
|
|
There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Machines, Machinery
|
|
|
By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Mankind, Man
|
|
|
But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860
|
|
Manners
|
|
|
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control: you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Behavior from The Conduct of Life, 1860
|
|
|
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
|
|
|
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The basis of good manners is self-reliance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Marriage
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Martyr, Martyrdom
|
|
|
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Masses
|
|
|
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Men
|
|
|
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Men & Women
|
|
|
Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Military, the
|
|
|
The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Mind, the
|
|
|
We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
Minorities
|
|
|
Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.
|
Books by and about Ralph Waldo Emerson