Quote

Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Belief
Happiness
Give
Firsts
Circumstance
First
Circumstances
Giving
Gives
Joy
Mistake

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the earth's beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All things are moral and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Money is of no value it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill of the spender.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat self-control is the rule.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The moral equalizes all enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whipof the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?
Ralph Waldo Emerson