Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer.

I wait for the hour when that divine Beauty, which ravished the hearts of the Hebrew prophets, Hindu and Buddhist visionaries, Christian and Sufi mystics, and Chinese sages, will make itself known in America today.

of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance

know exactly what it wants. The one thing it does know is that it feels ill at ease and pinched by society's conventions. Society ought to cherish this voice of resistance and tolerate its excesses. For there is hope in extravagant feeling and creativity, but there is no hope in lifeless repetition and routine.

As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation.

facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for

and beauty and goodness comes to each man directly, in flashes of spiritual light

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down...

All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.

Ne te quaesiveris extra.

Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift The warm rosebuds below.

Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse

The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.

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. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

let him look into [fear's] eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, - see the whelping of this lion, - which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Nunca hubo un niño tan encantador, pero su madre se alegró de dormirlo (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Over everything stands its daemon or soul, and, as the form of the thing is reflected by the eye, so the soul of the thing is reflected by a melody.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. Samuel Johnson The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passion adds eyes; is a magnifying glass. Sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable to the philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism.

The ancestor of every action is a thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them. It draws the children from their play, the old from their arm-chairs, the invalid from his warm chamber: it holds the hearer fast; steals away his feet, that he shall not depart; his memory, that he shall not remember the most pressing affairs; his belief, that he shall not admit any opposing considerations.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.