Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Value

14 quotes

  1. Nothing can be preserved that is not good.

  2. If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

  3. A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster-bank or among the seaweed.

  4. What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

  5. A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

  6. Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much.

  7. Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.

  8. I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

  9. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

  10. The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

  11. We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

  12. A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

  13. Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

  14. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

All Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes