Ralph Waldo Emerson Wish Quotations

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.

I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already.

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.

A scholar does not wish to be always pumping his brains; he wants gossips.

Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know.

Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.

I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.