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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.

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
History
Gains
Nature
Material
Truth
Materials
Right
Conflict
Incessant
Mankind
Exhibits
Records
Steady
Moral
Gain
Interest
Interests

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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
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The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded every sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
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Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
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How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is.
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I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
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A great man is always willing to be little.
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The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
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The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.
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Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
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Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.
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I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions I will seek my own.
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In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining forthe metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.
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We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
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Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there.
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Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.
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The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.
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The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
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We read often with as much talent as we write.
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An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
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The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.
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