"Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes."
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Quote collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (page 50 of 211)
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"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory."
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"Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command."
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"A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine."
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"The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting."
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"When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe."
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"Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him."
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"The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients."
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"An empire is an immense egotism."
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"What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?"
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"It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration."
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"What potent blood hath modest May."
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"The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic."
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"Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear."
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"A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special Talent, and the mastery of Successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced."
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"Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride."
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"Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals."
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"A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveler in a very far country."
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"Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political status of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is ever a romance of history in all dynasties--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb."
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"But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation."
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