Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in strictness and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point at original energy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
And the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them and the moon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it... ''Beware of me,'' it says, ''but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science has shown the great circles in which Nature works..

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall, The bias of the will betray.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Soul rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a mistis absorbed into the heat of the Sun--but the soul is the kingdom of God, the abode of love, of truth, of virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson