Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments.

New York is a sucked orange.

Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.

One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred;

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.

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.

A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.

Never read a book that is not a year old.

Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.

The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

No man can have society upon his own terms.

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.