Quote

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

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
Ships
Straightens
Sufficient
Tacks
Distance
Zigzag
Average
Voyage
Line
Voyages
Hundred
Ship
Lines
Tendency
Best
Tendencies

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere only the low habits need palaces and banquets.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What a new face courage puts on everything!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
As we are, so we do and as we do, so is it done to us we are the builders of our fortunes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The highest Beauty should be plain set.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Speak the affirmative emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nothing is quite beautiful alone nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
When some external event raises your spirits and you think good days are preparing for you, do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health he must be at the top of his condition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Adult males are what their moms designed them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I do not wish to please him I wish that he should wish to please me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Almost every man we meet requires some civility requires to be humored - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is always a best way of doing everything.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson