Waldo Emerson Quotes

Writing should be the settlement of dew on the leaf.

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.

Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth.

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.

The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition.

[D]ivine Providence... keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul.

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.

Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.

Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.

Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.

What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?

A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.

What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.

There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.

My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation.

If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.

Life itself is ... a sleep within a sleep.

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches.

Our statute is a currency which we stamp with our own portrait.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

The life of labor does not make men, but drudges.

A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time.

In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac.

Between cultivated minds the first interview is the best.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.

Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.

Every noble activity makes room for itself.

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.

The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existance of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

Beauty rests on necessities.

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

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

A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for 10 minutes longer.

A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

Man's actions are the picture book of his creeds.

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

You need not fear to handle the truth roughly. She is no invalid.

If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.

The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being.

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.