~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes ~

[MysteRy]

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring they carry them as silently away.

[MysteRy]

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion.

[MysteRy]

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

[MysteRy]

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

[MysteRy]

There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich who want something more; that of the sick who want something different; and that of the traveler who says 'Anywhere but here.'

[MysteRy]

It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man having once shown himself capable of original writing is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.

[MysteRy]

Excite the soul and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear; the world itself loses its solidity nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.

[MysteRy]

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat men to whom a crises which intimidates and paralyzes the majority comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!

[MysteRy]

Creative force like a musical composer goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme now high now low in solo in chorus ten thousand times reverberated till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.

[MysteRy]

If a man has good corn or wood or boards or pigs to sell or can make better chairs or knives crucibles or church organs than anybody else you will find a broad hardbeaten road to his house though it be in the woods.

[MysteRy]

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning conservers at night. Reform is affirmative conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort reform for truth.

[MysteRy]

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradicts everything you said today.

[MysteRy]

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

[MysteRy]

When a man is pushed tormented defeated he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits; on his manhood; he has gained the facts; learned his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

[MysteRy]

There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.