Quote

A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

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
Enough
Face
Purpose
Happiness
Faces
Indicates
Success
Attained
Culture
Cheerful
Nature
Intelligent
Ends
Wisdom

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible of the guidance of suitors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All men are poets at heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct opposition in all points to the real and wholesome success. One adores public opinion, the other, private opinion one, fame, the other, desert one, feats, the other, humility one, lucre, the other, love one, monopoly, and the other, hospitality of mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
People seem sheathed in their tough organization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The cities drain the country of the best part of its population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, andthe country is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The land,--travel a whole day together,--looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Power and speed be hands and feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion but in mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they come under another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
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