Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; Our valors are our best gods.

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.

It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master.

The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden.

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.

Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.

Man hopes, genius creates

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

I will receive from them not what they have but what they are.

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.

Whatever limits us,we call Fate

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing do it with all your might. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. ~

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

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events.

We go to Europe to be Americanized.

The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, feeds upon itself.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;-and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber which thou sittest.