Waldo Emerson Quotes
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.
He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius.
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.
If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.
Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear.
Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual
We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall; Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, trebleor centuple use and meaning.
When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none.
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says anywhere but here.
Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.
