The Aphorisms of R. W. Emerson
12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23
*
(( 1 ))
*
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
*
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
*
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
*
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
*
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
*
Every wall is a door.
*
We must be our own before we can be another's.
*
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
*
We are wiser than we know.
*
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
(( 2 ))
*
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
*
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
*
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
*
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
*
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
*
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
*
Earth laughs in flowers.
*
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
*
Children are all foreigners.
*
Be an opener of doors.
(( 3 ))
*
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
*
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
*
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
*
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
*
Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
*
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
*
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
*
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
*
When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another, the practiced person relies on the language of the first.
*
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
(( 4 ))
*
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
*
What you do speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
*
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.
*
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
*
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
*
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
*
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
*
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of 4 or 500 pages.
*
We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
*
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
(( 5 ))
*
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
*
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
*
Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.
*
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
*
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
*
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
*
Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
*
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
*
Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.
*
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.
(( 6 ))
*
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
*
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.
*
To be great is to be misunderstood.
*
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
*
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
*
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.
*
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
*
This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life Depends upon one's actions.
*
Think, and be careful what thou art within; For there is sin in the desire of sin; Think, and be thankful, in a different case; For there is grace in the desire of grace.
*
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
(( 7 ))
*
They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson in life who does not every day surmount a fear.
*
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
*
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
*
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance: that imitation is suicide: that he must take himself for better, or for worse.
*
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
*
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
*
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.
*
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
*
The years teach much which the days never knew.
*
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
(( 8 ))
*
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.
*
The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that man are convertible.
*
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
*
The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.
*
The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.
*
The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.
*
The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
*
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
*
The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation; when memory came, it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.
*
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
(( 9 ))
*
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
*
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
*
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
*
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
*
The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.
*
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
*
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
*
The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
*
The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.
*
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
(( 10 ))
*
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
*
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
*
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
*
The first wealth is health.
*
The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.
*
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
*
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
*
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
*
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
*
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
(( 11 ))
*
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
*
The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
*
The art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.
*
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
*
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
*
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
*
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
*
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
*
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
*
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
(( 12 ))
*
Revolutions go not backward.
*
Reality is a sliding door.
*
Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.
*
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
*
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
*
People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
*
People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
*
People only see what they are prepared to see.
*
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
*
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
(( 13 ))
*
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
*
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
*
Our best thoughts come from others.
*
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
*
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
*
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
*
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
*
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
*
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
*
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
(( 14 ))
*
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
*
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
*
Night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree.
*
New York is a sucked orange.
*
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
*
Nature hates calculators.
*
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
*
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
*
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.
*
Money often costs too much.
(( 15 ))
*
Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth, so much bread.
*
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
*
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
*
Men are what their mothers made them.
*
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
*
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.
*
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
*
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
*
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
*
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
(( 16 ))
*
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
*
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
*
Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.
*
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
*
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
*
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
*
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
*
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
*
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
*
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
(( 17 ))
*
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
*
Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
*
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
*
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
*
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
*
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
*
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
*
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
*
If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
*
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
(( 18 ))
*
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
*
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
*
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
*
Hitch your wagon to a star.
*
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
*
He builded better than he knew; the conscious stone to beauty grew.
*
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
*
God screens us evermore from premature ideas.
*
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.
*
God enters by a private door into every individual.
(( 19 ))
*
Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
*
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
*
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
*
Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
*
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
*
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
*
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
*
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
*
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
*
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.
(( 20 ))
*
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
*
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
*
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
*
Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done. But I'm telling you honestly that it doesn't surprise me. I knew I could do it.
*
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
*
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
*
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
*
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
*
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
*
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
(( 21 ))
*
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.
*
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
*
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
*
Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.
*
Every burned book enlightens the world.
*
Every artist was first an amateur.
*
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
*
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
*
Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
*
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
(( 22 ))
*
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
*
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
*
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
*
Concentration is the secret of strengths in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.
*
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
*
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
*
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
*
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
*
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
*
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
(( 23 ))
*
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
*
Between eighteen and twenty, life is like an exchange where one buys stocks, not with money, but with actions. Most men buy nothing.
*
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
*
Beauty without expression is boring.
*
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
*
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
*
As soon as there is life there is danger.
*
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
*
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
*
America is another name for opportunity.
(( 24 ))
*
Always do what you are afraid to do.
*
All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.
*
All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud, you have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
*
All mankind love a lover.
*
All life is an experiment.
*
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
*
All diseases run into one, old age.
*
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
*
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
*
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
(( 25 ))
*
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
*
A man in debt is so far a slave.
*
A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
*
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
*
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
*
A great man is always willing to be little.
*
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
*
(((*)))