Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

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

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works.

There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. Material

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 lived and lived well.

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without.

I question the value of our civilization when I see that our public representatives have lost hold of the simplest, strongest truths. Nothing demonstrates the emptiness of a person's mind more than putting party loyalty above principle.

A materialist would argue that I'm a product of my circumstances. But I make my own circumstances. If I make a change in my dominant thoughts or motives, a change in my situation and surroundings will soon follow. Through my actions, I attract people and situations to match my mentality. As I am, so I act; and as I act, so I attract.

The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

The truest test of civilization is not the census, size of cities, or crops; but the kind of man the country turns out.