Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Our best history is still poetry.

Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams

Language is fossil poetry

Over the inter glaciers, I see the summer glow, And, through the wild-piled snowdrift, The warm rosebuds below.

Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

There are men who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race.

Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

Skill to do comes of doing.