Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The law of heaven and earth is life for life.

He who lays up treasures on earth spends his life backing away from his treasures. To him, death is loss. He who lays up treasures in heaven looks forward to eternity; he's moving daily toward his treasures. To him, death is gain. He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice. Are you despairing or rejoicing?

Paradise is for those who make paradise.

Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.

I mean, I knew I wasn't a nice person, but what did I do in my past life to deserve this? I must have hit a bus full of nuns while driving a stolen car on my way to selling drugs to schoolchildren!

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth.

The thundering voice that wrings, in one dark, damning moment, crimes of years!

Bernie Sanders even reminded me of the way I felt at parties over the years. You go to a party, you don't know anybody, you sort of wander around. You hold a drink in your hand, you don't know what to do. This poor guy Bernie, he was at a loss with this group of people he didn't know.

Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.

If you want something then you lose everything. If you don’t want anything then you already have everything.

Life is not fair, but one day God's going to settle the score. He's going to right the wrongs. So, who can get better justice - you or God?

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway. Ethan was like that. Even if he was dead. He saved the world, but he shattered mine. What now?

You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen.

Let him who desires to be harsh in making demands upon his debtors consider that he is God’s debtor.

Mr Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions illness defeat string parties no parties urns desuetude disaffection claws loss Trebizond napkins shame stones distance fever Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence labels miasma amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards.

We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God's commandments; no further.

All religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

Am I the woman I think I am, the woman I want to be? More importantly, am I the woman the Savior needs me to be?

There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice.

Our friend and we were invited aboard on a party of pleasure, which is to last forever. His chair was ready first, and he has gone before us. We could not all conveniently start together; and why should you and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow, and know where to find him.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.

It's fun to talk about heaven, about the throne of God and Jesus and Pop and the daughter we thought we had lost but will meet again someday. But it's not fun to talk about how we got there.