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364 quotations in the database by Emerson |
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| 1. There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter whogets the credit.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Accomplishment |
| 2. The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Accomplishment |
| 3. 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.
--- Emerson |
| Action |
| 4. Every noble activity makes room for itself.
--- Emerson |
| Action |
| 5. What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
--- Emerson |
| Action |
| 6. Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Action |
| 7. If you would not be forgotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Action |
| 8. There's a time to wink as well as to see.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Action |
| 9. Do the thing and you shall have the power. They who do not the thing have not the power.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Action |
| 10. Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Action |
| 11. Make yourself necessary to somebody.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Adaptation |
| 12. Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning to own them: they solicit him to enter and possess.
--- Emerson |
| Address |
| 13. The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Adversity |
| 14. The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish,--all duties even.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Affection |
| 15. Few envy the consideration enjoyed by the eldest inhabitant.
--- Emerson |
| Aging |
| 16. Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.
--- Emerson |
| Aging |
| 17. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Aid |
| 18. America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| America |
| 19. America is a country of young men.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| America |
| 20. A man ... makes his inferiors his superiors by heat.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Anger |
| 21. No sensible person ever made an apology.
--- Emerson |
| Apology |
| 22. 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 |
| Appetite |
| 23. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone to seed.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Aristocracy |
| 24. Noblesse oblige; or, superior advantages bind you to larger generosity
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Aristocracy |
| 25. Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Aristocracy |
| 26. If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Arrogance |
| 27. Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Art |
| 28. In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Art |
| 29. Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Art |
| 30. Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Art |
| 31. 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 |
| Artist |
| 32. The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Artist |
| 33. The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Artist |
| 34. So nigh is grandeur to our dust; So near is God to man; When duty whispers low; `I must;' The youth replies; `I can.'
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Aspiration |
| 35. 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 |
| Autobiography |
| 36. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.
--- Emerson |
| Baby |
| 37. 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 |
| 38. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Beauty |
| 39. We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has not superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Beauty |
| 40. Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief in denying them.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Belief |
| 41. We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Belief |
| 42. 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Blessings |
| 43. The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Body |
| 44. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.
--- Emerson |
| Books |
| 45. For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is, for the time, the history
--- Emerson |
| Books |
| 46. Books are the best things, well used: abused, among the worst.
--- Emerson |
| Books |
| 47. Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
--- Emerson |
| Books |
| 48. If well used, books are the best of all things; if abused, among the worst.
--- Emerson |
| Books |
| 49. Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Books |
| 50. 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 |
| Bragging |
| 51. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Candor |
| 52. Every burned book enlightens the world.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Censorship |
| 53. Character is higher than intellect. ... A great soul will be strong to live as well to think.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Character |
| 54. Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Character |
| 55. What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Character |
| 56. Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Character |
| 57. Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Charity |
| 58. It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
--- Emerson |
| Cheat |
| 59. Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness,--an open and noble temper.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Cheer |
| 60. So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more remains.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Cheer |
| 61. A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Children |
| 62. A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Civilization |
| 63. The true test of civilization is, not the census,
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Civilization |
| 64. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Civilization |
| 65. The one prudence of life is concentration.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Concentration |
| 66. In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Consultants |
| 67. Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Contradiction |
| 68. Conversation is an art in which man has all mankind for competitors.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Conversation |
| 69. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Courage |
| 70. What a new face courage puts on everything!
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Courage |
| 71. Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Courage |
| 72. Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Courtesy |
| 73. 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 |
| Courtesy |
| 74. Go put your creed into your deed.
Nor speak with double tongue. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Creed |
| 75. There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Crime |
| 76. Blame is safer than praise.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Critic |
| 77. Culture, with us, ends in headache.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Culture |
| 78. Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Culture |
| 79. Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
--- Emerson |
| Curiosity |
| 80. A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Cynic |
| 81. As soon as there is life there is danger.
--- Emerson |
| Danger |
| 82. As soon as there is life there is danger.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Danger |
| 83. Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Debt |
| 84. A man in debt is so far a slave.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Debt |
| 85. The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Depend |
| 86. Shallow men believe in luck, wise and strong men in cause and effect.
--- Emerson |
| Destiny |
| 87. Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
--- Emerson |
| Destiny |
| 88. Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
--- Emerson |
| Destiny |
| 89. Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, and a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.
--- Emerson |
| Disease |
| 90. It is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and convenience for it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Disease |
| 91. Love of beauty is taste.
--- Emerson |
| Dispute |
| 92. So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,
The youth replies, _I can_. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Duty |
| 93. One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
--- Emerson |
| Education |
| 94. The secret of education is respecting the pupil.
--- Emerson |
| Education |
| 95. Is not every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof?
--- Emerson |
| Education |
| 96. The things taught in colleges and schools are not an eduction, but the means of education.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Education |
| 97. The education of the will is the object of our existence.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Education |
| 98. High knowledge and great strength are within the reach of every man who unflinchingly enacts his best.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Education |
| 99. Take egotism out, and you would castrate the benefactors.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Egotism |
| 100. Each man's task is his life preserver.
--- George B. Emerson |
| Employment |
| 101. What I most need is someone to make me do what I can.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Encouragement |
| 102. Enthusiasm is the mother of effort...
--- Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 103. Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.
--- Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 104. Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
--- Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 105. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 106. The world belongs to the energetic.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 107. Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Enthusiasm |
| 108. All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Eternity |
| 109. The first lesson of history, is, that evil is good.
--- Emerson |
| Evil |
| 110. The first lesson of history is the good of evil.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Evil |
| 111. How can I hear what you say, when what you do thunders in my ears?
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Example |
| 112. Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Example |
| 113. The years teach much which the days never know.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Experience |
| 114. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Eye |
| 115. One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Eye |
| 116. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Facts |
| 117. All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Faith |
| 118. They conquer who believe they can.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Faith |
| 119. Fame is proof that people are gullible.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fame |
| 120. Men are what their mothers made them.
--- Emerson |
| Family |
| 121. There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fanatic |
| 122. If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fate |
| 123. Fear always springs from ignorance.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fear |
| 124. O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fear |
| 125. We love force and we care very little how it is exhibited.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Force |
| 126. God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Forgiveness |
| 127. Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Fortune |
| 128. Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
--- Emerson |
| Freedom |
| 129. Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is and perfectness of man.
--- Emerson |
| Freedom |
| 130. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Freedom |
| 131. A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 132. A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 133. A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 134. Go often to the house of thy friend, weeds choke the unused path.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 135. The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 136. The only way to have a friend is to be one.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 137. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
--- Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 138. God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful, or great, but he does intend us all to be friends.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 139. 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 |
| Friendship |
| 140. A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 141. A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Friendship |
| 142. For everything you have missed you have gained something.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Gain |
| 143. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Genius |
| 144. When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Genius |
| 145. We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Gentleman |
| 146. Rings and jewels are not gifts but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Gifts |
| 147. Hitch your wagon to a star.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Goals |
| 148. God offers to every mind a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please -- you can never have both.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| God |
| 149. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the center of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| God |
| 150. What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| God |
| 151. Father, we thank thee for flowers that bloom about our feet, father we thank thee, for tender grass so fresh and sweet, father, we thank thee, for the song of bird and hum of bee, for all things fair we hear or see, father in heaven, we thank thee. For blue of stream and blue of sky, father, we thank thee, for pleasant shade of branches high, father we thank thee, for fragrant air and cooling breeze, for beauty of the blooming trees, father in heaven, we thank thee. For this new morning with its light, father we thank thee, for rest and shelter of the night, father we thank thee, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything thy goodness sends, father in heaven, we thank thee.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Gratitude |
| 152. A great man is always willing to be little.
--- Emerson |
| Greatness |
| 153. To be great is to be misunderstood.
--- Emerson |
| Greatness |
| 154. All great men come out of the middle classes.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Greatness |
| 155. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Greatness |
| 156. To fill the hour--that is happiness.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Happiness |
| 157. Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Haste |
| 158. A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
--- Emerson |
| Hatred |
| 159. What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.
--- Emerson |
| Health |
| 160. The first wealth is health.
--- Emerson |
| Health |
| 161. When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
--- Emerson |
| Health |
| 162. Self-trust is the essence of heroism.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Hero |
| 163. Every hero becomes at last a bore.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Hero |
| 164. A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Hero |
| 165. The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Heroism |
| 166. There is properly no history; only biography.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| History |
| 167. Character - a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means.
--- Emerson |
| Honor |
| 168. Character is that which can do without success.
--- Emerson |
| Honor |
| 169. Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
--- Emerson |
| Honor |
| 170. The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.
--- Emerson |
| Honor |
| 171. No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
--- Emerson |
| Honor |
| 172. The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Honor |
| 173. Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Hospitality |
| 174. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Humanity |
| 175. A man is a god in ruins.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Humanity |
| 176. But men are better than their theology. Their daily life gives it the lie.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Humanity |
| 177. Extremes meet and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Humility |
| 178. Every man alone is sincere; at the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Hypocrite |
| 179. That man is idle who can do something better.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Idleness |
| 180. We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Idolatry |
| 181. The human body is the magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 182. There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 183. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true fo genius.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 184. The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 185. Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 186. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
--- Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 187. The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 188. Imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Imagination |
| 189. Insist on yourself; never imitate.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Imitation |
| 190. Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Inconsistent |
| 191. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Inconsistent |
| 192. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Individual |
| 193. The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
--- Emerson |
| Influence |
| 194. Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Influence |
| 195. Every thought which genius and piety throw into th
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Influence |
| 196. A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Instincts |
| 197. Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Intelligence |
| 198. Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any boter, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored.
--- Emerson |
| Intuition |
| 199. If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap, than his neighbor, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Inventions |
| 200. A man is a little thing while he works by and for himself; but when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, he is godlike.
--- Emerson |
| Justice |
| 201. He who loves goodness harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God.
--- Emerson |
| Kindness |
| 202. I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
--- Emerson |
| Kindness |
| 203. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Kindness |
| 204. 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.
--- Emerson |
| Knowledge |
| 205. Knowledge is the antidote to fear.
--- Emerson |
| Knowledge |
| 206. Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Knowledge |
| 207. Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Law |
| 208. By God, I will not obey this filthy enactment!
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Law |
| 209. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Law |
| 210. Trust men and they will be true to you, treat them gently, and they will show themselves great.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Leadership |
| 211. The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Learning |
| 212. Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word:
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Letters |
| 213. 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? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Libraries |
| 214. Life is a progress and not a station.
--- Emerson |
| Life |
| 215. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
--- Emerson |
| Life |
| 216. We are always getting ready to live but never living.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Life |
| 217. The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. . . . The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Life |
| 218. It is not length of life, but depth of life.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Life |
| 219. Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Literature |
| 220. The greatest man in history was the poorest.
--- Emerson |
| Loss |
| 221. The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.
--- Emerson |
| Love |
| 222. Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.
--- Emerson |
| Love |
| 223. Love is the essence of God.
--- Emerson |
| Love |
| 224. The power of Love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. . . There will always be a government of force where men are selfish. . .
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Love |
| 225. There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Love |
| 226. All mankind loves a lover.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Love |
| 227. Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Luck |
| 228. The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect the engineer is nobody.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Machine |
| 229. Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Man |
| 230. Man is a piece of the universe made alive.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Man |
| 231. Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Manners |
| 232. 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 |
| Marriage |
| 233. And one may say boldly that 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.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Martyr |
| 234. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
--- Emerson |
| Meditation |
| 235. The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Mind |
| 236. All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Minority |
| 237. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of beast.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Mob |
| 238. A nation never fails but by suicide.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nation |
| 239. A nation never falls but by suicide.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nation |
| 240. Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 241. Nature is upheld by antagonisms. Passions, resistance, danger are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 242. Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 243. How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 244. Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 245. Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 246. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Nature |
| 247. We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Necessity |
| 248. Obedience alone gives the right to command.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Obedience |
| 249. People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Opinion |
| 250. America is only another name for opportunity.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Opportunity |
| 251. For the world was built in order
And the atoms march in tune:
Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
The sun obeys them, and the moon. --- Ralph Emerson |
| Order |
| 252. Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Passion |
| 253. Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Patience |
| 254. In nature nothing can be given, all things are sold.
--- Emerson |
| Payment |
| 255. Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.
--- Emerson |
| Piety |
| 256. Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Plagiarist |
| 257. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Plagiarist |
| 258. Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Pleasure |
| 259. The true poem is the poet's mind.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Poetry |
| 260. A good intention clothes itself with power.
--- Emerson |
| Power |
| 261. Spiritual force is stronger than material force; thoughts rule the world.
--- Emerson |
| Power |
| 262. There is no knowledge that is not power.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Power |
| 263. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Power |
| 264. Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite?
--- Emerson |
| Prayer |
| 265. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
--- Emerson |
| Prayer |
| 266. As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Prayer |
| 267. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. . . prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. . . . As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Prayer |
| 268. No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Prayer |
| 269. Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Present |
| 270. If a man owns land, the land owns him.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Property |
| 271. No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Property |
| 272. The people are to be taken in very small doses.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Public |
| 273. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Punishment |
| 274. The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Pursuit |
| 275. Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quality |
| 276. When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless!
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quarrel |
| 277. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quotations |
| 278. He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quotations |
| 279. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quotations |
| 280. Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Reform |
| 281. What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a rem
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Reform |
| 282. Men are respectable only as they respect.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Respect |
| 283. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
--- Emerson |
| Revenge |
| 284. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Reward |
| 285. Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar.
--- Emerson |
| Riches |
| 286. The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
--- Emerson |
| Riches |
| 287. Money often costs too much.
--- Emerson |
| Riches |
| 288. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Sacrifice |
| 289. There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain.
--- Emerson |
| Sadness |
| 290. In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Safety |
| 291. Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, nor a mark of haste, or botching, or a second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
--- Emerson |
| Science |
| 292. Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
--- Emerson |
| Science |
| 293. Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
--- Emerson |
| Science |
| 294. Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Science |
| 295. Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.
--- Emerson |
| Self-Assertion |
| 296. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
--- Emerson |
| Self-discovery |
| 297. 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 |
| Sentimentality |
| 298. All diseases run into one, old age.
--- Emerson |
| Sickness |
| 299. Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Simplicity |
| 300. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Sincerity |
| 301. Skepticism is slow suicide.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Skepticism |
| 302. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Sleep |
| 303. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Soul |
| 304. When it is dark enough you can see the stars.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Space |
| 305. Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.
--- Emerson |
| Speech |
| 306. The music that can deepest reach, and cure all ill, is cordial speech.
--- Emerson |
| Speech |
| 307. Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Speech |
| 308. Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Speech |
| 309. Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Spirit |
| 310. Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Teaching barren moors to smile,
Painting pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
Whence a smokeless incense breathes. --- Ralph Emerson |
| Spring |
| 311. Concentration is the secret of strength.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Strength |
| 312. We acquire the strength we have overcome.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Strength |
| 313. Culture implies all that which gives the mind possession of its own powers; as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer.
--- Emerson |
| Style |
| 314. There is nothing so dreadful as a great victory - except a great defeat.
--- Emerson |
| Success |
| 315. The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant party: but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Success |
| 316. The great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than the iron walls of the gun which hinders the shot from scattering.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Success |
| 317. Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of sympathetic life.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Sympathy |
| 318. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man.
--- Emerson |
| Talents |
| 319. For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Taxation |
| 320. The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Teaching |
| 321. Knowledge exists to be imparted.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Teaching |
| 322. Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Temper |
| 323. 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 temptations we resist.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Temptation |
| 324. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but unexplainable: as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Theory |
| 325. Thought takes a man out of servitude into freedom.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Thinking |
| 326. We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Thoughts |
| 327. Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of action? 'Tis a trick of the senses, -- no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. . . . To think is to act.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Thoughts |
| 328. If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Thoughts |
| 329. The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Thoughts |
| 330. Here is a day now before me; a day is a fortune and an estate; who loses a day loses life.
--- Emerson |
| Time |
| 331. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
--- Emerson |
| Time |
| 332. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prusic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time.
--- Emerson |
| Time |
| 333. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Time |
| 334. Guard your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Time |
| 335. Remember this hour, this day is the most important hour and day in this lifetime. The past cannot be altered but this time determines eternity.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Time |
| 336. These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Time |
| 337. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Time |
| 338. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home... Travelling is a fool's paradise.
--- Emerson |
| Travel |
| 339. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Trivia |
| 340. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Trust |
| 341. The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.
--- Emerson |
| Truth |
| 342. The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.
--- Emerson |
| Truth |
| 343. No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
--- Emerson |
| Truth |
| 344. Truth is too simple for us; we do not like those who unmask our illusions.
--- Emerson |
| Truth |
| 345. The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
--- Emerson |
| Truth |
| 346. Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Truth |
| 347. The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Value |
| 348. Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Vice |
| 349. The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Victory |
| 350. All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Violence |
| 351. The only reward of virtue is virtue.
--- Emerson |
| Virtue |
| 352. Where there is no vision a people perish.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Vision |
| 353. The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.
--- Emerson |
| Waiting |
| 354. Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Want |
| 355. Our strength grows out of our weakness.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Weakness |
| 356. The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
--- Emerson |
| Wisdom |
| 357. 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 |
| Wit |
| 358. Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Wonder |
| 359. Every man's task is his life-preserver.
--- Emerson |
| Work |
| 360. I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Work |
| 361. The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| World |
| 362. They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
--- Emerson |
| Worry |
| 363. Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Writer |
| 364. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Wrong |