Love Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes & Sayings

In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men. — 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

Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and love much ... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self ... this is to have succeeded. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is the essence of God ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes. Blind - yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love for finding what he seeks, and only that. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The simplest words,
we do not know what they mean except when we love and aspire. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean? Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON, The American Scholar — Haven Kimmel

We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,
is not that mine? His wit,
if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
His blinding light
He flingeth white
On God's and Satan's brood,
And reconciles
By mystic wiles
The evil and the good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant.This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live well, learn plenty, laugh often, love much. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. (Despite) all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether ... The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flowing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks this question, or condescends to these evidences. For the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion; but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All mankind love a lover. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Same spirit which gave it forth, - is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart.... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The lover of letters loves power too. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you love me? Means at last do you see the same truth I see? If you do, we are happy together; but when presently one of us passes into the perception of a new truth, we are divorced and the force of all nature cannot hold us to each other. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To Laugh Often & to Love much — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,
Bound for the just, but not beyond;
Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
Of self in other still preferred,
But they have heartily designed
The benefit of broad mankind.
And they serve men austerely,
After their own genius, clearly,
Without a false humility. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is like wildflowers;
It's often found in the most unlikely places. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To describe adequately is the high power & one of the highest enjoyments of man.
She was beautiful and he fell in love with her. The thing has happened to millions, yet how few can tell the story. Try some of them, set them at the painting; each knows it all & can communicate nothing. Then comes Shakspeare [sic], & tells it point for point as it befel [sic], or better; and now we have two things, love & literature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets - most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. — 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

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

The love of novels is the preference of sentiment to the senses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's revenge for this humanity.What manner of man does science make? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The affirmative of affirmatives ... is love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is our highest word and the synonym for God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it
else it is none. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely thatwhich all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Successful people live well, laugh often, and love much. They've filled a niche and accomplished tasks so as to leave the world better than they found it, while looking for the best in others, and giving the best they have. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spring still makes spring in the mind
When sixty years are told:
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old
Over the winter glaciers
I see the summer glow
And through the wind-piled snowdrift
The warm rosebuds below. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty brings its own fancy price, for all that a man hath will he give for his love. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We know that madness belongs to love,
what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society is wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. — Ralph Waldo Emerson