Ralph Waldo Emerson Two Quotations

For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man.

Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.

In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic.

The worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, reallyshow very little relation to each other; never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition to reconcile themselves.

I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.

An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.

Two touch the string, The harp is dumb.

Mankind divides itself into two classes,--benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful.

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think.

There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

There are two laws discreteNot reconciled,Law for man, and law for thing.

A man must be in sympathy with society around him, or else, not wish to be in sympathy with it. If neither of these two, he must be wretched.

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation.

Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written.

Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the keys of our own nature.

And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together.

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.

If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many.

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.

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.

In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment.

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

Delicious is a just and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a feeling.

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.

There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.