I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Why should we not have a first-hand and immediate experience of God? — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . . — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
A man should not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars. — 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
![“I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he]…” quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/7ff/ralph-waldo-emerson-6_boys_i-like-my-boy-with-his-endless-sweet-sol_2801205.jpg)
