Famous Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Below are famous quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson - US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882).
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
As we grow old the beauty steals inward.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
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.
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
Children are all foreigners.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
Common sense is as rare as genius.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
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.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.
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 course, 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.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
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...
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
Give all to love; obey thy heart.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
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.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself.
He is great who confers the most benefits.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety.
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show for any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
I hate quotations.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
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.
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.
Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams.
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Imitation is suicide.
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
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.
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.
Nature hates calculators.
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
The faith that stand on authority is not faith.
The first wealth is health.
The glory of friendship is not the outstreched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.
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.
The less government we have the better.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
The reward for a thing well done is to have done it.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
The world belongs to the energetic.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
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 little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of 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.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
We are prisoners of ideas.
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
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.
We become what we think about all day long.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
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 the best property of all -- friends?
What a new face courage puts on everything.
What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.
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.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.
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.
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.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
Work is victory.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
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