Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotations | Page 2

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.