Ralph Waldo Emerson citations

Page 11

“Qu’est-ce qu’une herbe? Une plante dont les vertus n’ont pas encore été découvertes […].”

“Le premier secret du succès est la confiance en soi, la conviction que si vous êtes là, c’est que les pouvoirs de l’Univers vous y ont mis avec un motif, une tâche qui vous est strictement assignée de par votre constitution, et qu’aussi longtemps que vous y travaillerez, vous vous trouverez bien et réussirez.”

“Chaque minute que vous êtes en colère, vous perdez soixante secondes de bonheur.”

“Construisez donc votre propre monde.”

“Écrivez dans votre cœur que chaque jour est le meilleur jour de l'année.”

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

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

“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart….”

“Its the not the Destination, It's the journey.”

“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.”

“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.”

“When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.”

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

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

“The never-ending task of self improvement.”

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”

“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”

“No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

“Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

“Self trust is the essence of heroism.”

“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.”