Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
American philosopher, essayist, and poet.
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.
The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word Politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
The soul is subject to dollars.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can.
The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.
Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be the heroic.