Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I must do is all that concerns me

Presently a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts.

The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts.

He has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class have: but he has also, what they have not.--this strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appearances of the world, and build a bridge from the streets of cities to the Atlantis.

No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts.

Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries.

Do what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; I forget the clock.

The south-wind brings Life, sunshine, and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire, But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost he cannot restore, And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

The great-eyed Plato proportioned the lights and shades after the genius of our life.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it.

It's not the destination, it's the journey.

preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.

you how to get it yourself, that's of great benefit.) Our lives are transformed when we come to ourselves—when we awaken to God in ourselves. This is the path that Jesus walked, and bid us to follow. This is the way of salvation.

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright, who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

When an artist runs out of inspiration or a scholar wearies of books, they always have the ability to live. Character is more important than intellect. Life is primary; our thoughts about it are secondary.

The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past,—in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,—learn the amount of this influence more conveniently,—by considering their value alone.

Language is fossil poetry

Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

Sweet is death forevermore.

all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.