A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Quotations related to: "ralph waldo emerson"
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The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child.
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
Thought is the seed of action.
The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
In England every man you meet is some man's son in America, he may be some man's father.
The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend? The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
This world we live in is but thickened light.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Common sense is as rare as genius.
As we grow old?the beauty steals inward.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.
Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool it will be all one a hundred years hence.
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
Truth is the summit of being justice is the application of it to affairs.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
I awoke with devout thanksgiving for my friends.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Every sweet has its sour every evil its good.
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.
The years teach much which the days never knew.
We are prisoners of ideas.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
The less government we have the better.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.
Love and you shall be loved.
The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety.
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Love is the essence of God.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself.
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
No facts are to me sacred none are profane I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Give all to love obey thy heart.
What greater pain could mortals have than this To see their children dead before their eyes
Character is what can do without success.
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
The education of the will is the object of our existence.
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops?no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
Skill to do comes of doing.
There are always those who think they know what is your responsibility better than you do.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments yoiu make the better.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.