1
A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.
The complete collection
All quotes
Every quote we hold, 2473 of them from 233 people across 1123 works. Filter it, sort it, and follow any citation back to the source.
2418 checked at source
Filter the collection
Category
Feeling
Attribution
11 quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson · clear filters
2
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
3
If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.
4
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
5
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
6
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
7
Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.
8
Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
9
The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.
10
Thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day.
11
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emersonmisattributed·Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers, by Muriel Strode, in The Open Court, Volume XVII, Number 567·August 1903
Wrongly attributed
Universally attributed to Emerson, and it is in none of his essays, journals or letters. It is Muriel Strode, an American writer almost nobody has heard of, in the August 1903 issue of The Open Court. The rewriting is the interesting part: Strode wrote a vow in the first person about herself, and the version that circulates has been turned into an instruction issued to somebody else. Do not go where the path may lead is not what she said. I will not follow is.