Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
Spiritual force is stronger than material force thoughts rule the world.
If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publish...
To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompete...
What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking all...
Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
Life too near paralyses art.
Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.
Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed.
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellan...
There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
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.
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
Skepticism is slow suicide
