Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I always see the absurdity in most situations. It's my experience of how life works.

Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

'I know this is going to end bad, but I'm going to pretend it's going to end good.' My life's philosophy.

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

Things happen in the way they usually should. I'm a pretty fatalistic person.

That's the way it goes. Some things happen and some things don't. This one is obviously just wasn't meant to be. Except deep down... I still believe it was.

If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way.

I accept the universe!

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.

Words spoken about the Way have no taste. When looked at, there's not enough to see. When listened to, there's not enough to hear. When used, it is never exhausted.

"My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I'm sure," she says, adding, "I'll never know if that's true. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is."

The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.

Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That's the way to get on in life.

The way I see it," she continued, "is that some things are just meant to be the way they are.

The Way is ever nameless.

The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

Existence is a mystery , and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation .

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.

My philosophy of life can be summed up in four words: It can't be helped.

I lived in a project and...didn't have a good education. But...I'd listen to the preacher, who said that God would show me the way. Everything starts from that confidence.

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming.

Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will change that. Today you are alive and here and honored and blessed with good fortune. Look at this suset, it's beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.