Waldo Emerson Quotes
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.
I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Practice radical humility." He (or she)who masters the art of humility cannot be humiliated.
Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
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 so ridiculous.
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.
Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.
For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?
When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematical, and is dependent on the success of his manners.
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.
That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.
A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray.
It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
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.
Love is like a hunter, who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness. Love is strongest in pursuit; friendship in possession.
Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.
The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.
On bravely through the sunshine and the showers! Time hath his work to do, and we have ours.
The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun.