Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Be and not seem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A man is related to all nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The less government we have the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Every man is in some way my superior.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A man is a god in ruins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Life is a festival only to the wise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Knowledge is the only elegance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We boil at different degrees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Accept your genius and say what you think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Music causes us to think eloquently.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To live without duties is obscene.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The greatest homage to truth is to use it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The only reward of virtue is virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We become what we think about all day long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There is no knowledge that is not power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Heroism feels and never reasons and is therefore always right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Beauty rests on necessities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We walk alone in the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
All life is an experiment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The more experiments you make the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
What your heart thinks is great, is great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The soul's emphasis is always right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Every man alone is sincere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Perhaps they are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Our faith comes in moments, yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is merely through a transfer of idolatry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
What lies beyond us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To think is to act.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of somebody's enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
This gives force to the strong - that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The virtue in most request is conformity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
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, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. 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, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Let man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth's and harmony's behoof;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
So neigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near to God is man
When duty whispers low, 'Thou must',
The youth replies, 'I can'.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Whatever you do, you need courage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched 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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which he is totally unfit.Cannot we let people be themselves and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
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, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. ' 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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
I hate quotations.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There is properly no history, only biography.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
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, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The true poem is the poet's mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
It does not need that a poem should be long.
Every word was once a poem.
Every new relationship is a new word.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
We are students of words: we are shut up in a 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, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Men grind and grind in the mill of truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flower to them all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
New arts destroy the old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Life too near paralyses art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or fiend, by prayer or by wine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist (1803-1882)
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.