Quote

A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

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
Must
Line
Made
Fool
Men
Walk
Hair
Walks
Breadth
Wise
Impossibility
Lines
Excess
Wisdom
Golden

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
To Be is to live with God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Fashion understands itself good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Art is a jealous mistress and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten even so, they have made me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, andthe like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature is too thin a screen the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told: Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow And through the wind-piled snowdrift The warm rosebuds below.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every wall is a door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson