Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it

May you always do what you are afraid to do.

The ruin or blank, that we see when we look at nature is in our own eye...Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed neither can be perfect without the other.

why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

Everything Real Is Self-Existent.

There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are And it cometh everywhere.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practical man relies on the language of the first.

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.

Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.

The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in vain.

if we shall take the good we find,asking no questions,we shall have heaping measures.

Foolish people ask you, when you speak what they do not wish to hear, How do you know it is the truth, and not an error of your own? We know the truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

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

Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.