Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Contentment

• Money often costs too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Money, Greatest Wealth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.58, Harvard University Press

• The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Perfect, Effort

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle (1841). “Essays”, p.139

• A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong . . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Powerful, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.309, Library of America

• If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Contentment, Analysis, Asking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.208, Penguin

• All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Writing, Perfect

  Journal, May 1849

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