Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Nothing to do with anything, something to do with everything.

We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something.

Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity.

Let us look at wealth and poverty. The affluent society and the deprived society inter-are. The wealth of one society is made of the poverty of the other. "This is like this, because that is like that." Wealth is made of non-wealth elements, and poverty is made by non-poverty elements. [...] so we must be careful not to imprison ourselves in concepts. The truth is that everything contains everything else. We cannot just be, we can only inter-be. We are responsible fo everything that happens around us.

Instead of separation and division, all distinctions make for a rich diversity to be celebrated for the sake of the unity that underlies them. We are different so that we can know our need of one another.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality-not as we expect it to be but as it is-is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you.

We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone.

I know how inter-dependent the world is.

One person has a responsibility not just for himself but for inter-relationships with the existences of others and the world.

The age of isolation is gone. And gone are the days in which barbed wire served as demarcation lines, separating and isolating countries from one another. No country can escape looking beyond its boundaries to find the source of the currents which influence how it can live with others.

Do not focus too much on the east and forget the west. And do not ignore the south, to speak for the north. What happens in the east has effects in the north, as the west has in the south. And do not focus on one species and ignore the other. Or love your father but ignore your mother, or love your sister but ignore your brother. Do not forget each other. We are all part of each other. We are all ONE.

All of us, the great and the little have need of each other.

From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

No man is born unto himself alone; Who lives unto himself, he lives to none.

Patch was in my life for a reason. I needed him. We were two halves of the same whole.

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic.

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.

You have to understand that it's a very cooperative world, not only with the environment, with but our fellow human beings. If you do not cooperate, if you do not work together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and everybody dies with it. That's a law of nature, and it's existed forever. We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice, and can intellectualize the process.

We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.

A woman is only half of something there are usually two sides to.

We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself.

You are because I am and I am because you are. We are one another's strength.