Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
American - Poet May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882


What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first wealth is health.
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

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Beauty without expression is boring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must be our own before we can be another's.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
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

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

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

What you are comes to you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
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

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
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

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pictures must not be too picturesque.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every burned book enlightens the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach much which the days never know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

God enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
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

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

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

America is another name for opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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