Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Honor

• The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Inspirational, Life

• The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Lying, Character

  The Conduct of Life "Worship" (1860)

• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, Cynical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

• How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honor, Crowds, Today

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1856). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures ...”, p.265

• In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Stars, Moon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.32, North Atlantic Books

• Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Honesty, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2334, Delphi Classics

• The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Men, Honor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.118, Рипол Классик

• Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thank You, Lying, Honor

• I honor health as the first Muse.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Honor, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.227

• Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Esteem, Character, Simple

• Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong; men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Men, Long

• The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Eye, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.96, Harvard University Press

• The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Men, Doors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.183, Penguin

• Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honor, Causes, Fortune

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.305, Cosimo, Inc.

• Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Children, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.481, Рипол Классик

• Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first- born of the world are the competitors.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Law, Games

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.65, Jazzybee Verlag

• Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Men, Honor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.90, 谷月社

• The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Art, Truth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.155

• Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, aman of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wall, Integrity, Men

  "Wealth". Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860.

• Ability without honor has no value.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honor, Ability, Values

• The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Honor, Deeds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.527, Harvard University Press

• We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kindness, Heart, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.341, Library of America

• I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Honor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.156, Harvard University Press

• It is contended that those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Children, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.567, Modern Library

• Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A Nation's Strength”

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