Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

They have in themselves what they value in their horse, mettle and bottom.

But in the mud and scum of things, There alway, alway something sings.

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.

To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine man.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Yesterday, my sixty-ninth birthday, I found myself on my round of errands in Summer Street, and, though close on the spot where I was born, was looking into a street with some bewilderment and read on the sign “Kingston Street,” with surprise, finding in the granite blocks no hint of Nathaniel Goddard’s pasture and long […]

The house is a castle which the king cannot enter

The use of history is to give value to the present hour and its duty.

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age… has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.

There is properly no history; only biography.