Quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"If you shoot at a king you must kill him."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on kings
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"I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on knowledge   

"Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on knowledge
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"Knowledge is the only elegance."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on knowledge   

"Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on knowledge
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"I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language   

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"Language is the archives of history."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language
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"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language
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"Good men must not obey the laws too well."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on law and lawyers
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"The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on law and lawyers   

"The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on law and lawyers   

"The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on law and lawyers
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"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 own constitution; the only wrong what is against it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on law and lawyers
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"Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on leadership
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"The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on leadership
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"The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on leadership
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"We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on leadership   

"In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on learning
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"We learn geology the morning after the earthquake."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on learning
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"The years teach us much the days never knew."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on learning
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"The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption --pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on learning   

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"No man ever prayed heartily without learning something."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on learning
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"A man's library is a sort of harem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
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"Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
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"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries   

"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on lies and lying
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"The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life
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"Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life   

"If we live truly, we shall see truly."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life   

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life
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"Life too near paralyses art."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life   

"Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life   

"Live, let live, and help live"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life
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"Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life
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"It is not length of life, but depth of life."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on life
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"A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on anger
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"We boil at different degrees."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on anger
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"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on anger
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"Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on animals   

"Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on anxiety
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