Ralph Waldo Emerson Purpose Quotations

The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.

The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and there.

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.

Luck is just another word for tenacity of purpose.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose...