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Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.
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
Wanted
Much
Every
Men
More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat I will not love you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is bad enough that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society who has fine traits.He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He only is rich who owns the day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us in other words, to engage us to obey.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A little praise goes a great ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson