Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going

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

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

Love is our highest word and the synonym of God.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Our chief want in life, is, someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or

The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Nature hates calculators.

I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!

Earth laughs in flowers.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.