Quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on comedy and comedians   

"All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on commitment   

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on common sense
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"Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on common sense   

"When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on communication
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"For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on compensation
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"There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on complaints and complaining   

"Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conceit   

"We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves..."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conflict   

"We are the prisoners of ideas."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conflict   

"One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conformity   

"All successful men have agreed in one thing -- they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on consequences   

"All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conservatives   

"Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conservatives   

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on consistency   

"In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on consultants   

"Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on contradiction
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"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on contradiction   

"As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on control   

"Nothing external to you has any power over you."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on control
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"He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conventionality   

"Things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conversation   

"In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conversation   

"Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on conversation   

"Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on country   

"Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage
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"Courage consists in equality to the problem before us."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage   

"A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage   

"When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage   

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage
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"What a new face courage puts on everything!"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage   

"Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courage   

"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courtesy   

"Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courtesy   

"Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on courtesy   

"It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on crafts   

"That which builds is better than that which is built."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on creativity   

"As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on creeds   

"Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on crime and criminals   

"Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on crime and criminals