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Ralph Waldo Emerson

409 quotes

“So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Voluntaries, st. 3 <!-- Bartlett's, 10th ed. (1919): "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, / So near is God to man, / When Duty whispers low, Thou must, / The youth replies, I can!
“Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "'T is man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "B…
“Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What potent blood hath modest May!”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We boil at different degrees.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The days .... come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," — "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hitch your wagon to a star.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source