Ralph Waldo Emerson: Quotes about life

Ralph Waldo Emerson was American philosopher, essayist, and poet. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1454 quotes88 likes

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Self-Reliance

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Variant: You become what you think about all day long.

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Nature and Selected Essays

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no person can help another without helping themselves”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Variant: It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

“Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considerations by the Way
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

June 15, 1844
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Prudence

“England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Solution http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&amp;p=c&amp;a=p&amp;ID=20586&amp;c=323, l. 35-42 <br class="br">1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Natural History of Intellect (1893) http://www.rwe.org/natural-history-of-intellect.html

“I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considerations by the Way
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance