Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.

When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.

Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God.

God will not make himself manifest to cowards

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism.

God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive.

I am a part and parcel of God.

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me.

The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

He who loves goodness harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God.

To Be is to live with God.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams if you don't follow through.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself is to quote one.

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

In good writing, words become one with things.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

All good conversation, manners, and action come from a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the moment great.