Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (295) Spiritual Sayings
About the Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalistmovement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." His essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man." See website for more info - http://www.rwe.org/
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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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 serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
― 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
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is a journey, not a destination.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
“Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series
“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A great man is always willing to be little.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― 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
“Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series
“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You become what you think about all day long.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Envy is ignorance,
Imitation is Suicide.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
“Nothing external to you has any power over you.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
― 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
“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“People only see what they are prepared to see.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love, and you shall be loved.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You are constantly invited to be what you are.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Beauty without expression is boring.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires....courage.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . . ”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The years teach much the days never know.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every wall is a door.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fear always springs
from ignorance.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson on Self Reliance
“Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every 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;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“There are books . . . which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays & Poems
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Scatter joy!”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Tis the good reader that makes the good book.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius. ”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Thou art to me a delicious torment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“The reward of a thing well done is having done it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Imitation is suicide.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life: A Philosophical Reading
“In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The ancestor of every action is a thought”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays Including Essays, First & Second Series, English Traits, Nature & Considerations by the Way
“The world belongs to the energetic.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Hitch your wagon to a star.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nature and books belong to all who see them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We boil at different degrees.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going”
― 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
“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series
“Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“As we grow old...the beauty steals inward.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We are wiser than we know.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”
― 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
“I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Walking
“Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only true gift is a portion of thyself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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 constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims
“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart....”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poems
“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 unmistakenly 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
“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”
― 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
“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Books are for nothing but to inspire”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prose and Poetry
“God enters by a private door into every individual.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Money often costs too much”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“A man is known by the books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. 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 seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nature hates calculators.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Common sense is as rare as genius.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“Self trust is the essence of heroism.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Do the thing and you will have the power.”
― 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, Prose and Poetry
“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you've endured
From evils that never arrived.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A sufficient and sure method of civilization is in the influence of good women.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is more in every person's soul than we think.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Character is that which can do without success.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
“Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A man in debt is so far a slave.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A man's library is a sort of harem.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am the owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, History
“Every word was once a poem.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The never-ending task of self improvement.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“The student is to read history actively not passively.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. ”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The First wealth is health.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Chose your words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our best thoughts come from others.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is a luxury to be understood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love what is simple and beautiful.
These are the essentials.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Tao of Emerson the Tao of Emerson
“Ne te quaesiveris extra." (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The highest revelation is that God is in every man.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“The people are to be taken in very small doses.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We talk of choosing our friends, but our friends are self-elected.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Moderation in all things, especially moderation.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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