Ralph Waldo Emerson citations

Page 13

“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.”

“There is more in every person's soul than we think.”

“The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”

“Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.”

“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”

“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!”

“All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle… is another riddle.”

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

“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

“All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.”

“There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding”

“Every word was once a poem.”

“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”

“Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are.”

“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

“A man in debt is so far a slave.”

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

“Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.”

“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”

“There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.”

“Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.”

“I hate quotations.”

“Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches.”