Ralph Waldo Emerson May Quotations

We may be partial, but Fate is not.

Every man is the inlet and may become the outlet of all there is in God.

But we need not fear that we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end.

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs.

Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact.

Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has noprescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

I think it is the best of humanity that goes out to walk. In happy hours, I think all affairs may be wisely postponed for walking.

We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.

As much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it.

The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.

He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?

There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned tomorrow.

You may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind your own business.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.

The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.

A man in the wrong may more easily be convinced than one half right.

Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

We may like well to know what is Plato’s and what is Montesquieu’s or Goethe’s part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

...What torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived? and may never!

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear.

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

We cannot let our angels go; we do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.

The eye of prudence may never shut.

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

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Always scorn appearances and you always may.

What potent blood hath modest May.

A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

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