Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Law & Regulation (16 Quotes)

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Lawyers are a prudent race though not very fond of liberty

But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age.

If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses it is certain that the secret cannot be kept the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.

The highest virtue is always against the law.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark can fly like a hawk in the air can see atoms like a gnat can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

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.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.

Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but Intelligence.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses out of sickness and pain out of wooing and worshipping out of traveling and voting and watching and caring out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

The man for whom the law exists the man of forms, the conservative is a tame man.