

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.

Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.

Love, and you shall be loved.

Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

Be brave enough to do the loving thing.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

Knowledge is the only elegance.

Difficulties exist to be surmounted.

If you would lift me up, you've got to be on higher ground.
Longer Version:
If you would lift me you must be on higher ground. If you would liberate me you must be free. If you would correct my false view of facts, — hold up to me the same facts in the true order of thought, and I cannot go back from the new conviction.

Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.

People say law but they mean wealth.

Eyes...They speak all languages.

The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.

The exceptional life depends not on working harder, but on different, even opposite, actions from habit and the crowd.

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.

A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time.

The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.

Meet your failure nobly, and it will not differ from success.

Lose yourself in nature and find peace.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

We don't grow old. When we cease to grow, we become old.

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

The years in your life
are less important
than the life in your years.

Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.

Continual failure is a road to success -- if you have the strength to go on.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Of cheerfulness, or a good temper -- the more it is spent, the more of it remains.

Nature tells every secret once.

Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

Calmness is always godlike.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The First wealth is health.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

No sensible person ever made an apology.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

Don't be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams.

Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

You are constantly invited to be what you are.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Longer Version:
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Real action is in silent moments.

Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
Longer Version:
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
Longer Version:
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time. This cup which nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call hope, love, ambition, science; especially it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself.

Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

Men are better than their theology.

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.
Longer Version:
Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first- born of the world are the competitors.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Longer Version:
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manner and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

Skill to do comes of doing.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.

The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means to an education.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.
Longer Version:
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency.
Longer Version:
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy.

We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.

Let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew.

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn.
Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson are featured in:
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