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We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
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
Discovered
Busy
Whether
Indolent
Times
Afterwards
Inspirational
Begun
Thought
Idle
Today
Improvement
Much
Accomplished
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
No performance is worth loss of geniality. 'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. He becomes acquainted with the resistances and with his own tools increases his skill and strength and learns the favorable moments and favorable accidents.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Times are the masquerade of the eternities trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, so hot? my little Sir.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know
Ralph Waldo Emerson
