Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Conduct of Life (1860)

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I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is his, who has money to go over it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. I think, there is a restlessness in our people, which argues want of character. All educated Americans, first or last, go to Europe; — perhaps, because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of this country might suggest. An eminent teacher of girls said, "the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe." Can we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

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 sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances... Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only money of God is God. He never pays with any thing less, or any thing else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The victories of character are instant, and victories for all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a search after power: and this is an element with which the world is so saturated—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought, for causes which are unpenetrated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson