Ralph Waldo Emerson Heart Quotations

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship,like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire

I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself anylonger for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall bethe happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that youshould. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust thatwhat is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moonwhatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, Iwill love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself byhypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truthwith me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

The way to learn German, is, to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart.

I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart apoints.

A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

What you set your heart upon, surely shall be yours.

Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!-it seems to say,-there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

Henceforth, please God, forever I forego the yolk of men's opinions. I will be light-hearted as a bird and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, and I hear continually his voice therein.

To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion.

The longer we live the more we must endure the elementary existence of men and women; and every brave heart must treat society asa child, and never allow it to dictate.

I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?

Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.

Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay.

All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt.

Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.

If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.

Whoever has had the experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart isan oath from the Most High. I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations, in this infant, of a terrific force.

Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours.

But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.

Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.

Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again.

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the toughfibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show.

I like the church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be.

Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.

What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, Heart's love will meet thee again.

The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of.

A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.

All men are poets at heart.

If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed; For when love has once departed From the eyes of the false-hearted, And one by one has torn off quite The bandages of purple light; Though thou wert the loveliest Form the soul had ever dressed, Thou shalt seem, in each reply, A vixen to his altered eye; Thy softest pleadings seem too bold, Thy praying lute will seem to scold; Though thou kept the straightest road, Yet thou errest far and broad.

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.

A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head.

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.

Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.

When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He only is right who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded by worry, fret and anxiety. Finish every day, and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Within, I do not find wrinkles and used heart, but unspent youth.

God hid the whole world in thy heart.

Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men - that is genius... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist... What I must do, is all that concerns me; not what the people think... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

And truly it demands something god like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

A deep man believes that the evil eye can whither, the heart's blessing can heal, and that love can overcome all odds....

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.

The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.

Virtue alone is sweet society, It keeps the key to all heroic hearts, And opens you a welcome in them all.

A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, - I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or deal with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so? Not mine; not thine; not his. But I think we must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the common benefit? and we must not cease to tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone aright every day.

Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly in endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.

Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told: Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow And through the wind-piled snowdrift The warm rosebuds below.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.

Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse.

The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.

When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?

The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

A friend is the hope of the heart.

Give all to love; Obey thy heart....

We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.