Ralph Waldo Emerson Joy Quotations

Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told; somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas, sometimes with chisel on stone, sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music, but clearest and most permanent, in words.

With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.

We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid hallucinations, and especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up first or last. But the mighty mother, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some great joys.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.

Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse.

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.

My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.

Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.

In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.

Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

To fill the hour; that is happiness to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

Who makes and keeps the Jew or the Negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy?

Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want.