“I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Go cherish your soul; express companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will the faculties rise fair and full… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be And life pulsates in… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
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… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image