Ralph Waldo Emerson: Trending quotes (page 17)

“Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.”

“I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints”

“Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.”

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.”

“God enters by a private door into every individual.”

“A man's library is a sort of harem.”

“Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

“Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.”

“We must be our own before we can be another's.”

“No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.”

“It is a luxury to be understood.”

“Speak your latent conviction… Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

“Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!”

“Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character.”

“Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.”

“I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.”

“I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”

“Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.”

“But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.”