Quote

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
Whether
Indolent
Times
Afterwards
Inspirational
Begun
Thought
Idle
Today
Improvement
Much
Accomplished
Discovered
Busy

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Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.
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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.
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Our health is our sound relation to external objects our sympathy with external being.
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What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.
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Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
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All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.
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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.
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I didn't find my friends the good Lord gave them to me.
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Beauty brings its own fancy price, for all that a man hath will he give for his love.
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Patience and fortitude conquer all things.
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Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.
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The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
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Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.
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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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Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
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Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.
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The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.
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Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years.
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Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.
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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.
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