Quote

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

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
Whether
Compare
Better
Bitter
Feel
Gratitude
Feels
Grateful
Different
Worse
Mind
Minds
Relieved
Something
Hell
Depending
World
Heaven
Disappointed

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen thousand foot mountain... avoid prettiness - the word looks much like pettiness - and there is but little difference between them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are disgusted by gossip yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.
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
In England every man you meet is some man's son in America, he may be some man's father.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in... the part he plays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Books are the best of things, well used abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
One must be an inventor to read well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
Ralph Waldo Emerson