Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder. In the man, could we lay him open, we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril of his work; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell preexist in the secreting organs of the fish.

This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers.

See yonder leafless tree against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And ever subdividing separate, Limbs into branches, branches into twigs, As if they loved the element, & hasted To dissipate their being into it.

For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.

There may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, --I and the abyss.

Genius is the activity which repairs the decay of things.

Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

The years teach much which the days never know.

the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The

You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

The Sphinx must solve her own riddle.

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.

All mankind love a lover.

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.