Collected Poems and Translations Quotes

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“See yonder leafless tree against the sky,
How they diffuse themselves into the air,
And ever subdividing separate,
Limbs into branches, branches into twigs,
As if they loved the element, & hasted
To dissipate their being into it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“But as this fugitive sunlight
Arrested & fixed
And with the primal atoms mixed
Is plant & man & rock
So a fleeing thought
Taken up in act & wrought
Makes the air & the sun
And hurls new systems out to run”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“Atom from atom yawns as far
As moon from earth, or star from star.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“If only I have right of seeing
In this wilderness of being
And from the vision glorious
Must come back to my lonely house.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

“Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all thy mean affairs.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations