"Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 197 of 211)
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"Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds, in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness."
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"I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it."
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"The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign."
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"Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena."
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"The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use."
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"The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much impression."
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"He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted."
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"Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live."
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"Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date."
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"In England every man you meet is some man's son; in America, he may be some man's father."
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"It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated."
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"There is no God dare wrong a worm."
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"In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith."
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"All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains."
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"The earth is a machine which yields almost gratuitous service to every application of intellect. Every plant is a manufacturer of soil. In the stomach of the plant development begins. The tree can draw on the whole air, the whole earth, on all the rolling main. The plant is all suction-pipe,--imbibing from the ground by its root, from the air by its leaves, with all its might."
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"There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?"
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"Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession."
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"Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain."
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"A man should not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars."
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