Ralph Waldo Emerson - Power Quotes

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Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The law of nature is: Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not do the thing have not the power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not cheap.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power is what they want, not candy-power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought; which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every natural power exhilarates; a true talent delights the possessor first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and…it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path…. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What power does Nature not owe to her duration, of amassing infinitesimals into cosmical forces!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the president has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand behind the throne.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.

Ralph Waldo Emerson