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

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Make yourself necessary to somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as there is life there is danger.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

All diseases run into one, old age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

All mankind love a lover.
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

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Our best thoughts come from others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
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

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reality is a sliding door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

A man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Children are all foreigners.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nature hates calculators.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Revolutions go not backward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Every wall is a door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power and speed be hands and feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always safety in valor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Without electricity, the air would rot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a farm but a mute gospel?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is our dictionary.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
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

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are wiser than we know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing external to you has any power over you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
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

In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
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 chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We acquire the strength we have overcome.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
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

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

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

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.
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

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

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
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

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

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
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

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.
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