Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I am so much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the… — 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
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,--muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told: Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In every company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. The continent we inhabit is to be… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture...food for our mind, as well as our… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, - the Genius and creative Principle of each… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different?… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The ancestor of every action is thought; when we understand that we begin to comprehend that our world is governed by thought… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Real men don't conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to… — 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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share
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
In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share