Waldo Emerson Quotes
Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.
A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it.
Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.
Wise men read very sharply all of your private history in your look and gait and behavior.
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die."
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.
I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.
A man complained that on his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbor's. I advised him to buy it, and it would never seem long again.
The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.
Greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.
Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.
The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed, by, as a loss of power.
An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.
A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.
We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.
The laws of light and of heat translate each other;-so do the laws of sound and colour; and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.
Presently we pass to some other object which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying~out of gardens.