Ralph Waldo Emerson – 137 Quotes

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137 Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

– 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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

– 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

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power and speed be hands and feet.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth laughs in flowers.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature hates calculators.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening, only with his legs.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money often costs too much.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are what their mothers made them.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All mankind love a lover.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as there is life there is danger.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

– 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

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be great is to be misunderstood.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man is always willing to be little.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

– 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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

– 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

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first wealth is health.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

God enters by a private door into every individual.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach much which the days never know.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

– 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

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best thoughts come from others.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty without expression is boring.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

– 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

Every artist was first an amateur.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All diseases run into one, old age.

– 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

Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson