Quote

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

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
Reliance
Life
Spectacle

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and...it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path.... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Happy is the hearing man unhappy the speaking man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If you cannot be free be as free as you can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Speak the affirmative emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The State is our neighbors our neighbors are the State.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson