Quotes & Sayings About Emerson

Peace has its victories but it takes brave men to win them — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever the situation and however disheartening it may be, it is a great hour when a man ceases adopting difficulties as an excuse for despondency and tackles himself as the real problem. No mood need be his master. — Harry Emerson Fosdick

I like people who can do things — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is, essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him and his own, patent. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a happy person comes into the room, it is as if another candle has been lit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle ... is another riddle. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career. — Michael Emerson

Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right. — Jim Harrison

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another,
that we find we have (a common Nature)
one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organ of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing by ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the U.S. trade deficit, and the portion of that deficit attributed to China, continue to grow, our own economy is at risk of losing its reputation as a leader in world trade. — Jo Ann Emerson

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to its reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for the change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of that rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus. — Jorge Luis Borges

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fame is proof that the people are gullible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

SLEEP IS NOT, DEATH IS NOT; WHO SEEM TO DIE LIVE. HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN, FRIENDS OF YOUR SPRING-TIME, OLD MAN AND YOUNG MAID, DAY'S TOIL AND ITS GUERDON, THEY ARE ALL VANISHING, FLEEING TO FABLES, CANNOT BE MOORED. - Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ransom Riggs

Love, and you shall be loved. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is, as Emerson says, some central idea or conception of yourself by which all the facts of your life are arranged and classified. Change this central idea and you change the arrangement or classification of all the fact and circumstances of your life. — Wallace D. Wattles

Yeah, it's funny, working on a show with as large a cast as we have here, your work gets sort of compartmentalized. There's still about half the cast that I've never had a scene with but I have missed working with Terry. — Michael Emerson

The best nations are those most widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin, a peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the island. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What will you have? quoth God; pay for it, and take it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wanted to be alone with him. Really alone. "Maybe we should take this back to my place." He lifted his head to look at me, a strange expression on his face. I let out a nervous giggle. "That sounded better in my head."
"It sounded pretty damn good out of it. — Myra McEntire

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is the antidote to fear — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone tocount myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You become what you think about all day long. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dearest events are summer-rain. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To Be is to live with God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Accuracy is essential to beauty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

With a strong domestic economy, low national unemployment at 5 percent, and increasing retail sales, the picture should look rosy. But one look at the trade deficit changes all of that. — Jo Ann Emerson

It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest Beauty should be plain set. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

An artist spends himself like the crayon in his hand, till he is all gone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Their spirituality was in nature, even though Emerson was a preacher on the pulpit, he ended up going out into nature for direct, face-to-face communication with God, if you want to call all of this creation part of God. — Story Musgrave

The beautiful is never plentiful. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The finished man of the world must eat of every apple once. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,
these eat up the hours. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man is always willing to be little. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm. — Carmine Gallo

And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You're scared," he said quietly.
"Scared?" I scoffed. "Of what?"
"Of anything real. And what we have is real. You love me and it terrifies you."
"I don't love you," I lied.
He grabbed my face then, dragging me closer with both hands. "You love me. I know you do. I know it because I can see it in your eyes ... in the way you look at me." He inhaled. "It's the same way I look at you. — Sophie Jordan

The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every natural power exhilarates; a true talent delights the possessor first. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He read me Whitman, of whom he was very fond, and also Emerson.
I didn't like Whitman, and said so. I always thought him a writer who tried to bully his way to prophecy. Of Emerson at the time I had no opinions to offer. I found him out later to be a sugary humbug. His transcendental bunkum sickened me. — Patrick Kavanagh

We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All history is biography. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I couldn't believe it! I mean, I'd always dreamed of acting on the screen - my previous background was all theater - but I wasn't sure if the opportunity would ever present itself. Not only was this acting for the screen, this was acting in 'The Hunger Games!' I knew that I had to give this audition my all. — Jacqueline Emerson

When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, - and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: "Not my will, but thine, be done." What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion? — Harry Emerson Fosdick

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way? — Michael Emerson

To a physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson