You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
...as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane;… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it… — 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