Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.

We boil at different degrees.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.