Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Life (68 Quotes)

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.... Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of a sympathetic life.

Life is a progress and not a station.

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 as invalids pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live my life is for itself, and not for spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask for primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from a man to his actions.

A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty.

For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life, if freedom fail.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at least a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.

Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

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.

Here is a day now before me A day is a fortune and an estate who loses a day loses life.

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.

The chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do the best we can.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth . . .

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.

Life is eating us up. We all shall be fables presently. Keep cool it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Life is too short to waste ... Twill soon be dark Up mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, then that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Prudence is the virtue of the sense. It is the science of Appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

Life is a search after power.

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

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

A man cannot utter 2 or 3 sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought . . .

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

The pleasure of life is according to the man who lives it, and not according to the work or the place

The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.