Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a luxury to be understood.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.

Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character.

For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.

The sun shines today also.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die Live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, old man and young maid, Day's toil and it's guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored

there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding

To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Nature hates calculators.