Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less government we have, the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.

Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.

The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself…. The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods!

Language is the archives of history…. Language is fossil poetry.

Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.

Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.

Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.

It is only when the mind and character slumber that the dress can be seen.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity.

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

Today unbind the captive,So only are ye unbound;Lift up a people from the dust,Trump of their rescue, sound!

With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together.

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

I like a church; I like a cowl;I love a prophet of the soul;And on my heart monastic aislesFall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;Yet not for all his faith can seeWould I that cowlèd churchman be.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

We die of words. We are hanged, drawn and quartered by dictionaries. We walk in the vale of shadows. It is an age of hobgoblins.

The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.