Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.

Out of sleeping a waking Out of waking a sleep.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Grow angry slowly - there's plenty of time.

Today is a king in disguise.

'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

Live well, learn plenty, laugh often, love much.

Love is the essence of God.

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.

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

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. ... In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections.

The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.