Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

The soul lets no man go without some visitations and holy-days of a diviner presence.

If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.

Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.

We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young anddodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.

The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.

The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.

Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.

I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.

A right rule for a club would be,-Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic.

Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel.

If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.

It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail.

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.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk but after the counsel of his own bosom.

A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

Every man has a vocation. The talent is the call.

A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.