Quote

Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Makes
Reader
Hidden
Good
Else
Equal
Discovered
Thought
Seem
According
Confidences
Seems
Sleep
Profit
Profoundest
Book
Books
Ears
Sleeps
Passion
Meant
Passages
Heart
Reading
Mines
Sensibility
Every
History
Mine
Finds
Mind

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.
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A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
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Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
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We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved time, which keeps her from him, is his chest the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament
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If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.
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I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.
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Let there be worse cotton and better men.
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A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
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Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.
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In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.
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Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.
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If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
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America means opportunity, freedom, power.
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But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
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So far as a person thinks they are free.
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Wealth is in applications of mind to nature and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.
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My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
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Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
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Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.
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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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