Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 36

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Good Morning, Thank You

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Lectures and Orations”, p.103

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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 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• By God, I will not obey this filthy enactment!

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Carpe Diem, Filthy, Carpe

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• In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, with hope & love, & go as brave as the zodiack. In age we put out another sort of perspiration; gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rainbow, Brave, Doubt

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1975). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1848-1851”, p.168, Harvard University Press

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• But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Dragons, Principles

  "English Traits".

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• When all shoot at one mark, the gods join in the combat.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Combat, Mark

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• Spring still makes spring in the mind
  When sixty years are told:
  Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
  And we are never old
  Over the winter glaciers
  I see the summer glow
  And through the wind-piled snowdrift
  The warm rosebuds below.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Spring, Heart

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The World-Soul”

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• What you set your heart upon, surely shall be yours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart

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• If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Knowing, Bragging

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.50, Harvard University Press

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• Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Sea, Land

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.434, Harvard University Press

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