Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Nobody is impervious to misfortune.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

You can't come into this world without becoming its victim.

Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

The sparrow still falls.

We're all gonna lie, we're all gonna cry, and we're all gonna take painful shits.

No man alive can say, This shall not happen to me.

He seemed to be talking about my fears, my insecurity, and my unwillingness to see what was wonderful because tomorrow it might disappear and I might suffer. The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

Lastly, he must remember that he himself hath no exemption from the common lot, but that he is bound by the same laws of mortality, and liable to the same ailments and afflictions with his fellows.

A lot of people have great hope, and a lot of people who have great hope live. And, some of them who have great hope die. So it's not that hope is going to save you.

Life itself is offensive and certainly does not apologize - in fact, it hurts considerably and, as we all know, is often very rude and troublesome, just as nature or art can be.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Life is an incurable disease.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?

This is part of the involuntary bargain we make with the world just by being alive. We get to experiences the splendor of nature, the beauty of art, the balm of love and the sheer joy of existence, always with the knowledge that illness, injury, natural disaster, or pure evil can end it in an instant for ourselves or someone we love.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.