Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs . . . Whoso would be a man must also be a non-conformist.

As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or safe.

The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal. It

In a virtuous community, men of sense and of principle will always be placed at the head of affairs. In a declining state of public morals, men will be so blinded to their true interests as to put the incapable and unworthy at the helm. It is therefore vain to complain of the follies or crimes of a government. We must lay our hands on our own hearts and say 'Here is the sin that makes the public sin'.

spent much of the next two years cowriting and editing her biography.  Emerson was a signatory of the "Declaration of Sentiments" of the first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. And in 1855, he attended and addressed the convention in Boston.

If he had the earth for his pasture and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy or demon who possesses such power as that. Mentioned in Sixty Days and Counting, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

For everything you have missed you have gained something else, and for everything you gain you lose something else.

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

If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused. I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.

We countenance each other in this life of show, puffing, advertisement, and manufacture of public opinion; and excellence is lost sight of in the hunger for sudden performance and praise.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.

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?

When you have worn out shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out.

The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.

whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed.

In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life.

If Love his moment overstay, Hatred's swift repulsions play.

Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.

Good books replace the best universities.

The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, take, is the natural genius of the British mind.