Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

We expect a great man to be a good reader.

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.

What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for 10 minutes longer.

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

Man's actions are the picture book of his creeds.

To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul.

A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.

People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.

Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go.

One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.

There is no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth.

Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

When the gods come among men, they are not known.