Waldo Emerson Quotes

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

As gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.

Flowers are the earth laughing.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?

A man's library is a sort of harem.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.

There is always safety in valor.

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

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

The secret is the answer to all that has been, all that is, and all that will ever be.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.

A man is related to all nature.

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,-must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.

The eye is the painter and the ear the singer.

Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.

Speak the affirmative; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject.

Love is our highest word and the synonym of God.

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

What we call results are beginnings.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

We have more than we use.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!