Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.

In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

Life is our dictionary.

Postpone not your life.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

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.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

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

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanity's.

Isolation must precede true society.