Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2968 quotes in 14547 categories

• Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.
• If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes.
• To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
• To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the…
• There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have…
• Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
• Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.
• The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial side; has its translation, through…
• One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.
• Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want.
• The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.
• A little praise goes a great ways.
• In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.
• Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm.
• Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.
• A good intention clothes itself with power.
• Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only…
• Every great man is unique.
• Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble…
• The less government we have the better.

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