Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

If a man is at once acquainted with the geometric foundation of things and with their festal splendor, his poetry is exact and his arithmetic musical.

We will meet as though we met not and part as though we parted not.

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm...Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.

We are born believing. A man bears belief, as a tree bears apples.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

The foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be th fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

In God, every end is converted into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid.

Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.

The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?

My country is the world and my religion is to do good.