Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Our distrust is very expensive.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

This world we live in is but thickened light.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.