Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Time (33 Quotes)




    There is no man who is not some time indebted to his vices, as no plant that is not fed from manure

    The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.

    Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.


    Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.

    Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

    It is as impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself, as for a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time.

    Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

    A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude . . .

    This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

    Well, said Red Jacket to someone complaining that he had not enough time, I suppose you have all there is.

    Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

    There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, or for worse as his portion.


    I love thy music, mellow bell,
    I love thine iron chime,
    To life or death, to heaven or hell,
    Which calls the sons of Time.

    There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance that imitation is suicide that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

    There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth it is the beginning of wisdom.

    So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.


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

    Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

    Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

    My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.


    It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

    This time,like all times, is a good time, if we but know what to do with it.

    Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration.

    For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is, for the time, the history of the world.

    Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions the surest poison is time.


    When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.



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