Best Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Top 10)
-
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Finish each 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. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
More Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
-
When it is dark enough, men see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Life is a festival only to the wise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
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
-
Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Beauty without expression is boring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Love, and you shall be loved.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The years teach much which the days never know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Fear always springs from ignorance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires....courage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every novel is a debtor to Homer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Immitation is suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to leave the world a better place, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We boil at different degrees.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men—that is genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The world belongs to the energetic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Thou art to me a delicious torment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We are the prisoners of ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man is known by the books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Patience and fortitude conquer all things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Common sense is as rare as genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Give all to love; Obey thy heart....
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for the deliverance from fear. It is the storm within that endangers him, not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The never-ending task of self improvement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nature hates calculators.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
God enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every man is an impossibility until he is born.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We must be our own before we can be another's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Self trust is the essence of heroism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Character is that which can do without success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men are respectable only as they respect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
How much finer things are in composition than alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The music that can deepest reach and cure all ill is cordial speech.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Never read a book that is not a year old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
As soon as there is life there is danger.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Insist upon yourself. Be original.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We change whether we like it or not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Fame is proof that the people are gullible.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
When there is no vision, people perish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Skill to do comes of doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Man is physical as well as metaphysical, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Finish each 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, you shall begin it well and serenely...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A good intention clothes itself with power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Our strength grows out of our weakness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
All mankind love a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man is a god in ruins.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is better to be a thorn in the side of a friend than an echo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Art is a jealous mistress.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Reality is a sliding door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There is properly no history, only biography.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs....
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Whatever limits us we call fate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Sorrow makes us all children again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A friend is the hope of the heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A woman's strength is the unresistible might of weakness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of chance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Knowledge exists to be imparted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Man is a piece of the universe made alive
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If a man owns land,
the land owns him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Self-command is the main elegance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Obedience alone gives the right to command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means to an education.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The education of the will is the object of our existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The less government we have the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
To believe in luck ... is skepticism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only prudence in life is concentration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The only true gifts are a portion of yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There are some men above grief and some men below it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What is success?
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by
A healthy child, a garden patch
Or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed
Easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every burned book enlightens the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
I pay the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
What torments of grief you endured, from evils that never arrived
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson