Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes - Page 33

• Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Responsibility, Men, Cities

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.242, Harvard University Press

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• Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: With a Biographical Introduction and Notes”

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• If you would lift me up, you've got to be on higher ground.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Higher Ground, Lift Me Up, Lifts

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• Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Secret, Crime

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• Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Time, Future

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• 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

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• Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Grief, Evil, Torment

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• A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Faults, Blame

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2267, Delphi Classics

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• Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.235

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• The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Selfish, Selfishness, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.84, Harvard University Press

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• I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Believe, Winter

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.37, Penguin

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• All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Needs, Needed, Fairs

  1839 'Each and All', l.11-12.

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• The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Worry, Soul

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• The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Two, Political

  "The Cycles of American History". Book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., p. 23, 1986.

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• I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Stars, Winning

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• You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. It is a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Taken, Men, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.339

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• A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Organization, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.311, Library of America

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• There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Kind, Trifles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Linda Allardt (1982). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.97, Harvard University Press

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• Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,--never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Simple, Worry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Essays”, p.118

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• The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Knowledge, Thieves

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.144, Penguin

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• Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sleep, Eye, Night

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.471, Library of America

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• Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Nature, Mean

  Nature, rev. ed., ch. 1 (1849)

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• I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Good Morning, Thank You

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Lectures and Orations”, p.103

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• There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Ears, Catchy

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• The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Men, Keys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.177, Penguin

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