Quote

For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.

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
Given
Attached
Thought
Whoever
Jointly
Come
Speaking
Provokes
Good
Truly
Adhere
Cause
Bonds
Influence
Fidelity
Virtue
Pledge
Causes
Provoking

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!
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When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
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All ages of belief have been great all of unbelief have been mean.
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Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years.
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Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.
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There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.
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Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
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We know that madness belongs to love,--what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven.
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If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.
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The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.
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If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He only is right who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded by worry, fret and anxiety. Finish every day, and be done with it. You have done what you could.
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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
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A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is the antidote to fear. [especially as fear often stands for false evidence appearing real!]
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, the italics are ours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson