Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Better that the book should be not quite so good, and the writer better, and not himself a ridiculous contrast to all he has written.

What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then?

The stars have us to bed: Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws. Music

Is it not the true scholar the only true master?

natural science is likely to be soon exhausted. Passing by many particulars of the discipline

Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without he heroic mind.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life . (Ams Pr Inc June 2004) Originally published 1841.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.

Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.

It is not length of life, but depth of life

Love is as much its demand as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right way, will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is hard to carry

True courage is not ostentatious; men who wish to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they know how potent it is with themselves?

We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence.

The earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.

Este momento es tan bueno como cualquier momento de la eternidad

The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own ends, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race.

Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.