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 POET A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so. Ralph Waldo Emerson stars wise children As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affecting. Ralph Waldo Emerson toys children rooms We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrath strong past The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. Ralph Waldo Emerson book art school Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson nature friendship order Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age. Ralph Waldo Emerson friendship men country Cunning is strength withheld. Ralph Waldo Emerson cunning strength We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. Ralph Waldo Emerson nature ambition life The life of man is a self-evolving circle. Ralph Waldo Emerson self men life Life is a search after power. Ralph Waldo Emerson power life-is life In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod. Ralph Waldo Emerson life hands art He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Ralph Waldo Emerson self-reliance doe life Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark! Ralph Waldo Emerson mind dark life A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty. Ralph Waldo Emerson intelligent men life Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it. Ralph Waldo Emerson faces men life Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation. Ralph Waldo Emerson literature men life So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. Ralph Waldo Emerson secret dark kindness The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Ralph Waldo Emerson divinity dream world The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Ralph Waldo Emerson wall rude mind What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health. Ralph Waldo Emerson preacher healthy self
