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 No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. Ralph Waldo Emerson knowing taken men Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations Ralph Waldo Emerson interest limits men We put our love where we have put our labor. Ralph Waldo Emerson work-effort our-love effort I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach. Ralph Waldo Emerson spiritual believe fall The eye of prudence may never shut. Ralph Waldo Emerson prudence eye may Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality. Ralph Waldo Emerson future imagination reality All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished-by fear...be honest with a man and you have no fear. Try to deceive and the relationship deteriorates. Ralph Waldo Emerson action trying men He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living. Ralph Waldo Emerson giving-up ambition art Power is what they want, not candy-power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought; which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied. Ralph Waldo Emerson feet giving men In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. Ralph Waldo Emerson depth men two Genius appeals to the future. Ralph Waldo Emerson appeals future genius Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design. Ralph Waldo Emerson design men life We can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. Ralph Waldo Emerson valuable life 'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward. Ralph Waldo Emerson eye boys science The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry. Ralph Waldo Emerson volcanoes sight science Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry. Ralph Waldo Emerson selfish nature science 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. Ralph Waldo Emerson what-matters glasses science No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them. Ralph Waldo Emerson perception men history The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. Ralph Waldo Emerson nature teaching science The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it. Ralph Waldo Emerson able use science
