Top 4251 Quotes & Sayings by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Page 70

The religions we call false were once true.

A bullet had found him, his blood ran out as he cried. No money could save him, so he laid down and died. Ooh, what a lucky man he was.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.

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.

The affirmative of affirmatives... is love.

The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not.

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto

Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. ... These road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.

The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.

Who are the farmer's servants? ... Geology and Chemistry, the quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the lightning of the cloud, the castings of the worm, the plough of the frost.

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.

The religions are obsolete when the reforms do not proceed from them.

To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.

Every day, a little sadder, a little madder. Will someone get me a ladder?

The world is all outside, it has no inside.

After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man.

It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement

Every man is a channel through which heaven floweth.

Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago, but it is put to better use.

All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of man's limbs and senses.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.

Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.

Performing on a stool, we've got a sight to make you drool, seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool, keep it cool.

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.

A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.

The street is full of humiliations to the proud.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion of well-doing and daring.

This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one's actions.

When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tablets yet unbroken: The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.

The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.

The true ship is the ship builder.

Our impatience of miles, when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards.

The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musican, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce.

No book was ever written down by any but itself.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.

The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended.

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.

In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim... The details, the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour.

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reality is more excellent than the report.

Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.

No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour.

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.

And striving to be Man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

Had I but written as many odes in praise of Muhammad and Ali as I have composed for King Mahmud, they would have showered a hundred blessings on me.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.