Ralph Waldo Emerson
459 quotations
The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
The soul's emphasis is always right.
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
A strenuous soul hates cheap success.
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
The ancestor of every action is thought.
Real action is in silent moments.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
We are always getting ready to live, but never living.
Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Beauty rests on necessities.
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.