Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.
Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest free.
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.
Research is not seeing what others do not see, it is seeing the same thing as other people and thinking what they do not.
Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.
We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.
Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.
It is one of the biggest blessing that you can be stupid with your true friends and behave like you shame to do elsewhere
We must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense.
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour.
They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.
The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.
The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and there.
When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say 'what a good speech,' it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce.
We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.
Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.
When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people.
Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.
Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.
A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.
But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.
To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.
The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.
Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimneyside of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front.
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.
There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.
This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of.
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.
We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.
We are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know is a point to what we do not know."
Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.
The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius.
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong; men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.
The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.
Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?
The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.
My angel,-his name is Freedom,- Choose him to be your king; He shall cut pathways east and west, And fend you with his wing.
Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.
Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old.