Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and make a trail.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be too late.

Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without the other side,—the bitter.

Do the things you fear to do and death of fear will be certain.

WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline. Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not

Changing our thoughts, Emerson asserts, can actually change our circumstances.

The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

The Negroes are our benefactors. They produce coffee, tobacco, cotton, sugar, rum, wine, and brandy—all the luxuries of the civilized world. Yet how are they treated in return? Among

As the eyes of Lyncæus 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.

INTRODUCTION. OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we

The Fugitive Slave Law 1851–54

The universe is an amazing puzzle, I thought as I looked upon this dizzying series of forms—radiant crystals, shining metals, gauzy butterflies, sea shells that seemed carved by a master artisan, the birds, beasts, insects, snakes, fish. All things are united by the same life force. Even rocks are formed from the same elements, sharing a kinship with plants and animals. These diverse expressions of nature seem so different at first glance, yet ultimately they are all connected.

Herein is especially apprehended the unity of Nature,—the unity in variety,—which meets us everywhere. All the endless variety of things make an identical impression. Xenophanes complained in his old age, that, look where he would, all things hastened back to Unity.

Finish everyday and be done with it. You have done what you could.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you

Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth.

Es tan malo, entonces, el ser mal interpretado? Pitágoras fue mal interpretado, y lo fueron Sócrates, Jesús, Lutero y Galileo, y lo fueron todos los espíritus puros y graves que han honrado a la humanidad. Ser grande es ser mal comprendido.

Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful solitude.

There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive, — a statement possible, so broad and so pungent that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it.

There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposed himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzed. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era

The years teach much which the days never knew!