Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

They have in themselves what they value in their horse, mettle and bottom.

But in the mud and scum of things, There alway, alway something sings.

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.

To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine man.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Yesterday, my sixty-ninth birthday, I found myself on my round of errands in Summer Street, and, though close on the spot where I was born, was looking into a street with some bewilderment and read on the sign “Kingston Street,” with surprise, finding in the granite blocks no hint of Nathaniel Goddard’s pasture and long […]

The house is a castle which the king cannot enter

There is properly no history; only biography.

The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.

The student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. […]