Best quotes by the American Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us.
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.
The ancestor of every action is thought.
I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Accept your genius and say what you think.
Travel is a fools paradise.
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
Pictures quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
Live, let live, and help live
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
If we live truly, we shall see truly.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Life too near paralyses art.
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
It is not the length of life, but the depth.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
As soon as there is life there is danger.
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson friends quotes
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It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
He who has a thousand friendsHas not a friend to spare,While he who has one enemyShall meet him everywhere.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.
O friend, my bosom said,Through thee alone the sky is arched.Through thee the rose is red;All things through thee take nobler form,And look beyond the earth,The mill-round of our fate appearsA sun-path in thy worth.Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.
What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson nature quotes
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Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
A man is related to all nature.
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.
In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.
Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
Nature hates calculators.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson beauty quotes
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Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Beauty rests on necessities.
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being:Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!I never sought to ask, I never knew:But, in my simple ignorance supposeThe selfsame power that brought me there brought you.
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Beauty without expression is boring.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson art quotes
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Artists must be sacrificed to their art.
The true poem is the poet's mind.
Every artist was first an amateur.
New arts destroy the old.
Art is the path of the creator to his work.
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
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.
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
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.
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
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Self-trust is the first secret to success.
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Every man is an impossibility until he is born.
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
If you shoot at a king you must kill him.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
Music causes us to think eloquently.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine
How much of human life is lost in waiting.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
The first wealth is health.
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
The most dangerous thing is illusion.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.
Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
The secret in education lies in respecting the student.
Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
Society is a hospital of incurables.
Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
Earth laughs in flowers.
Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
Sorrow makes us children again.
In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.
Life is a festival only to the wise.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Be an opener of doors.
All the great ages have been ages of belief.
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.
No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Fear always springs from ignorance.
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Artists must be sacrificed to their art.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Live, let live, and help live
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
The true poem is the poet's mind.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.
In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
Our strength grows out of our weakness.
There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected
We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
Every artist was first an amateur.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.
The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Our best thoughts come from others.
I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.
A man's what he thinks about all day long
Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.
We are the prisoners of ideas.
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
If we live truly, we shall see truly.
Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.
Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Every wall is a door.
Genius Borrows nobly.
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.
Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
The greatest man in history was the poorest.
Never read any book that is not a year old.
Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
A man is a god in ruins.
There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
