Waldo Emerson Quotes

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul

A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.

Let the bird sing without deciphering the song.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

Money often costs too much.

The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

A little integrity is better than any career.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

If you want to be great and successful, choose people who are great and successful and walk side by side with them.

The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Knowledge is when you learn something new every day. Wisdom is when you let something go every day.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

The the illuminated mind the whole world sparkles with light.

Thoughts rule the world.

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

Life is our dictionary.

Postpone not your life.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness, - an open and noble temper.

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Calmness is always Godlike.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Genius seems to consistent merely in trueness of sight.

If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.

Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.

We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.