Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes - page 63

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Well, said Red Jacket to someone complaining that he had not enough time, I suppose you have all there is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is the imagination Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy only the precursor of the reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He in whom the love of truth predominates ... submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion but he is a candidate for truth ... and respects the highest law of his being.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose. . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind that is, he seeks other men, and the otherest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Thenall goes well he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can see well into the past we can guess shrewdly into the future but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, or for worse as his portion. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
How painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality It is next worst to receiving one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do what we can, and then make up a theory to prove our performance the best.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not seen if the eye is too near.
Ralph Waldo Emerson