Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal. It

In a virtuous community, men of sense and of principle will always be placed at the head of affairs. In a declining state of public morals, men will be so blinded to their true interests as to put the incapable and unworthy at the helm. It is therefore vain to complain of the follies or crimes of a government. We must lay our hands on our own hearts and say 'Here is the sin that makes the public sin'.

spent much of the next two years cowriting and editing her biography.  Emerson was a signatory of the "Declaration of Sentiments" of the first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. And in 1855, he attended and addressed the convention in Boston.

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.

When you have worn out shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out.

whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed.

Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.

The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.

Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.