The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive. Ralph Waldo Emerson More Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson More Quotes From Ralph Waldo Emerson The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness. Ralph Waldo Emerson secret-life secret sympathy One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars Ralph Waldo Emerson wall stars sympathy 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 running country travel I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. Ralph Waldo Emerson anniversary heard love-is Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. Ralph Waldo Emerson courage fear inspirational An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity. Ralph Waldo Emerson eye kindness heart Though we travel the world over to find beauty, we must carry it with us or we find it not . . . The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference in beholders. Ralph Waldo Emerson vision differences world The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible. Ralph Waldo Emerson education teacher lying The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in spirit and energy it awakens. Ralph Waldo Emerson wickedness government evil Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred. Ralph Waldo Emerson truth integrity love The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. Ralph Waldo Emerson passion communication men Culture is one thing and varnish is another. Ralph Waldo Emerson one-thing other-cultures culture Say thank you! I want to hear you say it now. Out loud. 'Thank you.' You're saying thank you because your faith is so strong that you don't doubt that whatever the problem, you'll get through it. You're saying thank you because you know that even in the eye of the storm, God has put a rainbow in the clouds. You're saying thank you because you know there's no problem created that can compare to the Creator of all things. Say thank you! Ralph Waldo Emerson eye strong happiness All the world loves a lover. Ralph Waldo Emerson world-love best-love world Every man passes his life in the search after friendship. Ralph Waldo Emerson real friendship men A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson curiosity real may Delicious is a just and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a feeling. Ralph Waldo Emerson real feelings two In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue. Ralph Waldo Emerson broken book hands A collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare; but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein. Ralph Waldo Emerson boys book school There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson reading writing book
