Ralph Waldo Emerson
Book: Self-Reliance and Other Essays
"Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."
"There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so thay be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem."
"It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail."
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
"Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know."
"There is the power of complexions, obviously modifying the dispositions and sentiments."
"Fate is for imbeciles; all is possible to the resolved mind."
"Presently a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts."
"To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, thought nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars."
"The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection."
"We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it."
"In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself."
"An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch."
"A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss."
"Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth - is the fundamental law of criticism."
"Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed."
"The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light of thought, the world is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind."
"There is oone mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same[...] Who hath accedd to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent."
"Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are."
"A man who stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of himself."
"They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun genereal society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude."
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