Waldo Emerson Quotes

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!

I like to have a person's knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a person who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The soul circumscribes all things.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

We wake from one dream into another dream.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

Earth laughs in flowers.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb.

Do what you fear and your fear will die.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Shallow men believe in luck.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.

Every great man is unique.

The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in... the part he plays.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

You are constantly invited to be what you are.

We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.