Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

It does not to dwell on dreams and forget to live, but it is equally foolish to ignore the past – never forget.

Insist upon yourself. Be original.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments

If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs, The Gods are to each other not unknown. Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise.

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means to an education.

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, — He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.

Break the monotony. Do something strange and extravagant!

I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

We pass for what we are.

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

I unsettle all things.

The life of truth is cold.