Experience Quotes

“The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

“If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference. `Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' says the querulous farmer, `only holds the world together.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

“Nature, as we know her, is no saint…. She comes eating and drinking and sinning.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

“It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience