Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist.

Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Fear defeats more people than any other one ting in the world.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

5. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

"Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice."

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

All ages of belief have been great; all of unbelief have been mean.

It is time to be old To take in sail.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

There is always safety in valor.