Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every really able man, in whatever direction he work,-a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
How much of human life is lost in waiting.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All life is a nap. The more naps you take the better.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When it is darkest, men see the stars.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
One man’s justice is another’s Injustice. One man’s beauty another’s ugliness. One man’s wisdom another’s folly.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good men must not obey the laws too much.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. The Conservative
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fame is proof that people are gullible.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
– Ralph Waldo Emerson