Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Conduct of Life (1860)

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All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events, and strong with their strength.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There was never anything that did not proceed from a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being? There are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations withthem, and lead the activity of the human race. And if there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that force to draw material and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense instrumentalities organize around them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The physician prescribes hesitatingly out of his few resources... If the patient mends, he is glad and surprised.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled upin the skull of Napoleon!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whipof the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The longer we live the more we must endure the elementary existence of men and women; and every brave heart must treat society asa child, and never allow it to dictate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion; but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science is a search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid hallucinations, and especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up first or last. But the mighty mother, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some great joys.

Ralph Waldo Emerson