Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

A skilful man reads his dreams for his selfknowledge; yet not the details, but the quality.

If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.

Music is the poor man's Parnassus.

Imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment.

Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.

The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Every man is eloquent once in his life.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.

We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-creams.

Character is higher than intellect.

Indeed, a man's library is a sort of harem, and I observe that tender readers have a great prudency in showing their books to a stranger.

With the Past, as past, I have nothing to do; nor with the Future, as future. I live now...

I think sometimes, could I only have music on my own terms; could I live in a great city and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, — that were a bath and a medicine.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, the October woods!