- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit and not give the bread of life.

We are reformers in Spring and Summer in Autumn and Winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night.

The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that if you let it alone it will let you alone.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

Every reform was once a private opinion and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Ah if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!

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.

Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances a hundred things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom!

Sanity is very rare every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.

Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago but it is put to better use.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

Discontent is want of self-discipline it is infirmity of will.

To be simple is to be great.

It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

Nothing is more simple than greatness indeed to be simple is to be great.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself around your own.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.

Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict everything you said today.

Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Every sweet hath its sour every evil its good.

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.

If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead.

A man builds a fine house and now he has a master and a task for life is to furnish watch show it and keep it in repair the rest of his life.

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

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild.

With the past I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

We can see well into the past we can guess shrewdly in to the future but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.

Live wastes itself while we are preparing to live.

To finish the moment to find the journey's end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and ridiculous.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

The only reward of virtue is virtue.

When there is no vision people perish.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurl'd Here once the embattl'd farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.

A wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interests than it is theirs to find his weak point.

A woman's strength is the irresistible might of weakness.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.

Good-bye proud world! I'm going home Thou are not my friend I am not thine.

What torments of grief you endured from evils that never arrived.

Some of your hurts you have cured And the sharpest you still have survived But what torments of grief you endured From the evil which never arrived.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

We go to Europe to be Americanized.