Ralph Waldo Emerson: Quotes about life (page 3)

“Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introduction
1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836)

Life , Truth , Question , Perfection

“For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Boston
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Freedom

“Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Variant: Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life".

Life , Dead

“As soon as there is life there is danger.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Actually from De l'Allemagne (1813) by Madame de Stael.
Misattributed

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

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Life , Men

“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Life , Music

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior

Love , Life , Way , Happiness

“The cup of life is not so shallow
That we have drained the best
That all the wine at once we swallow
And lees make all the rest.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1827 journal entry reproduced in Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 82

Life , Wine

“Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each and All
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

Life

“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

Life , Housing

“What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

Shakespeare; or, The Poet
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Life , Religion , Behavior , Lovers

“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist