Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 36

• Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Secret, Crime

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• The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Selfish, Selfishness, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.84, Harvard University Press

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• Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Time, Future

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• Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

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• You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. It is a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Taken, Men, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.339

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• The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Worry, Soul

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• A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Faults, Blame

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2267, Delphi Classics

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• Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.235

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• All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Needs, Needed, Fairs

  1839 'Each and All', l.11-12.

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• The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Two, Political

  "The Cycles of American History". Book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., p. 23, 1986.

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• I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Stars, Winning

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• Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Simple, Worry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Essays”, p.118

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• Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sleep, Eye, Night

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

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• Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Nature, Mean

  Nature, rev. ed., ch. 1 (1849)

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• A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Organization, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.311, Library of America

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• The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Perfect, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle (1841). “Essays”, p.139

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• There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Ears, Catchy

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• The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Men, Keys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.177, Penguin

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• The Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Patriotic, Boston, Cities

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.599, Modern Library

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• The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Knowledge, Thieves

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.144, Penguin

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• The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Transition, Action, Conscious

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.496

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• How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Book, Hero

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty”, p.74

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• Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Power

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “The Power of Emerson's Wisdom”

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• Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.66, Penguin

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• Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Insane, And Love

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1319, Delphi Classics

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