My tongue is prone to lose the way,Not so my pen, for in a letterWe have not better things to say,But surely… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of… — 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
I quote another man's saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift.… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience,… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The question is whether [suicide] is the way out, or the way in. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
The river knows the way to the sea: Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity. — 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