Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes - page 12

For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow. Miss C. F. Forbes, (18171911). View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God you shall not have both. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
It is a luxury to be understood. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no person can help another without helping themselves. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,- congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, - mettle and bottom. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Music is the poor man's Parnassus. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson