Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on War & Peace (15 Quotes)

Peace has its victories, but it takes a brave man to win them.

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires someof the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or state, or letters and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man that is all anybody can tell you about it.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust . . .

So ... I feel in regard to this aged England ... pressed upon by transitions of trade and ... competing populations, I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days beforeindeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

The philosopher and lover of man have much harm to say of trade but the historian will see that trade was the principle of Liberty that trade planted America and destroyed Feudalism that it makes peace and keeps peace, and it will abolish slavery

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.