Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.

A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

Earth laughs in flowers.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer

Society is a hospital of incurables

We are parlor soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun.

Civilization depends on morality.

Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Extremes meet and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.

If a man own land, the land owns him.