Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power dwells with cheerfulness.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

One idea lights a thousand candles.

Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.

When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear this morning brings The outrage of the poor.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

By God, I will not obey this filthy enactment!

God hid the whole world in thy heart.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

God has delegated himself to a million deputies.

Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

Why should we not have a first-hand and immediate experience of God?

We learn that God IS; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him.

In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.

My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation.