Top 4251 Quotes & Sayings by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Page 69

All the devils respect virtue.

It is time to be old To take in sail.

Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer.

Great men exist that there might be greater men.

Come, see the north-wind's masonry, Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

Everyone I meet is in some way my superior.

We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle's, and of a rabbit, rabbit's. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

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.

Sometimes we receive the power to say yes to life. Then peace enters us and makes us whole.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.

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.

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.

I honor health as the first Muse.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

The highest Beauty should be plain set.

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.

It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,-one as much as another. All things are disolved to ther center by thier cause.

The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.

Only so much of life do I know as I have lived.

Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.

All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.

Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself.

Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.

The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.

The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.

By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.

Life is in short cycles or periods; we are quickly tired, but we have rapid rallies. A man is spent by his work, starved, prostrate; he will not lift his hand to save his life; he can never think more. He sinks into deep sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile in resources, and keen for daring adventure.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books.

We find in life exactly what we put into it

How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.

It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

A man must know how to estimate a sour face. The sour face of the multitude, like thier sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and the newspaper directs.

I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself anylonger for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall bethe happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that youshould. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust thatwhat is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moonwhatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, Iwill love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself byhypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truthwith me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

My tongue is prone to lose the way,Not so my pen, for in a letterWe have not better things to say,But surely put them better.

Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.

Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.

One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics.

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.

Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.

The Sun is the sole inconsumable fireAnd God is the sole inexhaustible Giver.

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.

Nature is a rag merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations.

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.