Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lo que queda detrás de nosotros, y lo que queda delante, es poca cosa comparada con lo que queda dentro de nosotros.

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.

I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him

There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of

Clouded and shrouded there doth sit The Infinite embosomed in a man.

Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon?

If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.

Yes, but does Maine have anything to SAY to Florida?

I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced.

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote "Not transferable," and "Good for this trip only," on these garments of the soul.

1842  Son Waldo (age 5) dies of scarlet fever.  Journalist Walt Whitman (age 23) attends Emerson's lecture on poetry in New York City. In his report for the New York Aurora, Whitman writes that it was the "richest and most beautiful" lecture he'd ever heard. On the same New York trip, Emerson becomes godfather to newborn William James, son of his friend, Henry James, Sr.

I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw everything, why draw anything?

When I came at last to Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierce directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms, --- unto which I lived.

the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes.

Treat all people as if they are real, because who knows, perhaps they are.

The knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it was painted for you; for such as had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions.

In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.

Instead of trying to create a new religion from scratch, aim to breathe new life into the forms that already exist. If you are alive, you'll enliven all you touch. To revive faith from dead tradition, three things are needed: soul, soul, and more soul.