Quotes from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Only so much of life do I know as I have lived. ”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is, essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him and his own, patent.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What is it we heartily wish of each other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No, but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms. We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itself so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality, though it comes in strokes of pain.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, -- that we find we have (a common Nature) -- one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world. Two cardinal facts lie forever at the base; the one, and the two.—1. Unity, or Identity; and, 2. Variety. We unite all things by perceiving the law which pervades them; by perceiving the superficial differences and the profound resemblances. But every mental act,—this very perception of identity or oneness, recognizes the difference of things. Oneness and otherness. It is impossible to speak or to think without embracing both.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and by the very knowledge of functions and processes to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes unpoetic.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. This native determination guides his labor and his spending. He wants an equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. And to save on this point were to neutralize the special strength and helpfulness of each mind. Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and not its acceptableness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The stars have us to bed: Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws. Music”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Love is as much its demand as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. It”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Popular quotes

“you always go for the ones who don’t really want you—she really wanted Adam Moorad, she had just been rejected coldly and subterraneanly by Julien—she was interested in thin ascetic strange intellectuals of San Francisco and Berkeley and not in big paranoiac bums of ships and railroads and novels and all that hatefulness which in myself is to myself so evident and so to others too—though and because ten years younger than I seeing none of my virtues which anyway had long been drowned under years of drugtaking and desiring to die, to give up, to give it all up and forget it all, to die in the dark star—it was I stuck out my hand, not she—ah time.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Solo allora saprai che qualsiasi strada è solo una strada, e che non c'è nessun affronto, a se stessi o agli altri, nel lasciarla andare se questo è ciò che il tuo cuore ti dice di fare. Ma il tuo desiderio di insistere sulla strada o di abbandonarla deve essere libero dalla paura e dall'ambizione. Ti avverto. Guarda ogni strada attentamente e deliberatamente. Mettila alla prova tutte le volte che lo ritieni necessario. Quindi poni a te stesso, e a te stesso soltanto, una domanda. Questa è una domanda posta solo da un uomo molto vecchio. Il mio benefattore me l'ha detta una volta quando ero giovane, e il mio sangue era troppo vigoroso perché la comprendessi. Ora la comprendo. Ti dirò cosa è: questa strada ha un cuore? Tutte le strade sono uguali; non portano da nessuna parte. Sono strade che passano attraverso la boscaglia o che vanno nella boscaglia. Nella mia vita posso dire di aver percorso strade lunghe, molto lunghe, ma io non sono da nessuna parte. La domanda del mio benefattore ha adesso un significato. Questa strada ha un cuore? Se lo ha, la strada è buona. Se non lo ha, non serve a niente. Entrambe le strade non portano da nessuna parte; ma una ha un cuore e l'altra no. Una porta a un viaggio lieto; finché la segui sei una sola cosa con essa. L'altra ti farà maledire la tua vita. Una ti rende forte. L'altra ti indebolisce.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

“After years of pining over something she could never have, she would choose to embrace the cold comfort of reality instead. No more daydreams of his smile, no more journal entries with his name, no more prayers for the impossible. She would not allow it.”
― Julie Lessman, quote from A Passion Most Pure

“Quit eye fucking him!” I spit out, finger in her face. “I’m right fucking here. Do you know how disrespectful that is?” I fume, pointing up and down my body.
“Yeah, you fucking slut!” Lucy yells from next to me…
“ I’m so fucking sick of girls like you thinking it’s okay to want what’s not yours to have.”
“Fucking whore!” Lucy yells, she’s drunk. I love drunk Lucy.”
― Jay McLean, quote from More Than This

“Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?”
― Tennessee Williams, quote from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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