Ralph Waldo Emerson: Man (page 2)

“Every man I meet is in some way my superior; and in that I can learn of him.”

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.”

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going”

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”

“A man is known by the books he reads.”

“Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.”

“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”

“The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.”

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.”

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”

“Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”

“A man's library is a sort of harem.”

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