Quotes & Sayings About Life Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach us much, which the days never knew. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The advantage in education is always with those children who slip up into life without being objects of notice. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? I am well assured that the Questioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring me the answers also, in due time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset. [speaking about Ralph Waldo Emerson] — John Muir

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

How much of human life is lost in waiting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness,
whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vast spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel, underlay that former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and will always circumstance, and what is called life, and what is called death. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to explain a reptile or a mollusk, and isolated it-which is hunting for life in graveyards. Reptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live, let live, and help live — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a god in ruins.When men are innocent,life shall be longer and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated are usually associated certain books which met his views. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man's life is a progress, not a station. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not the length of life, but the depth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hidden away in the inner nature of the real man is the law of his life, and someday he will discover it and consciously make use of it. He will heal himself, make himself happy and prosperous, and life in an entirely different world. For he will have discovered that life is from within and not from without. — 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

Our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowingvigor. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think that the heroism which at this day would make on us the impression of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a domestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and Fashion, and show men how to lead a clean, handsome and heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our cities and villages; whoso shall teach me how to eat my meat and take my repose and deal with men, without any shame following, will restore the life of man to splendor, and make his own name dear to all history. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us arerushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The House
... She lays her beams in music,
In music every ore,
To the candence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun-
That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But for the love of happy souls
Out live the newest stars. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is our dictionary — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson. — Lorenz Font

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under all these screens I have diffuculty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eyes are bold as lions,
roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither property nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! — Ralph Waldo Emerson

a man only knows what he's experienced — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is an experiment. The more experiments the better — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will no longer confer, differ, refer, defer, prefer, or suffer. I renounce the whole tribe of fero. I embrace absolute life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are books ... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no days in life that are so memorable as those that vibrate to some stroke of the imagination. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. "Life is a journey, not a destination." Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver the truth: After the torments of the journey, you have been well-prepared for the agonies of the destination. — Colson Whitehead

[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years in your life
are less important
than the life in your years. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life only avails, not the having lived. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. It — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prayer that craves a particular commodity - anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation. — 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

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

There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,
now under one disguise, now under another,
like a police in citizen's clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insist on your life, never imitate ... do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no person can help another without helping themselves — Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best of life is conversation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred charities? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,-there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,-that no honest seeking goes unrewarded. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imitation is suicide. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I would study, I would know, I would admire forever. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, - What is truth? and of the affections, - What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance,
what ample borrowers of eternity they are! — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a series of surprises. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long. — Ralph Waldo Emerson