Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Bostonian, having been born there in 1803. His father, William Emerson, was a clergyman in the Unitarian Church and had an interest in the arts.
Emerson’s education was at Harvard. He taught for a brief period and then became a minister at the Old Second Church in Boston. In 1827 Emerson traveled to Concord, New Hampshire, to preach, and there met the beautiful Ellen Louisa Tucker, who was barely 16 years of age.
He fell deeply in love with her, and they wed in 1829. Their happiness was to be short-lived, however, as she died in 1831. Her death affected Ralph badly, and he took months to recover from the shock. Questioning his role as a minister, he resigned later that year.
In 1832, Emerson traveled to Europe and met with both Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Emerson became close friends with Carlyle and was heavily influenced by him. Carlyle firmly believed in the individual as the basis of society.
On his return to the USA, Emerson met, and in 1835, married Lydia Jackson. They took up residence in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson became renowned for challenging traditional views on religion and philosophy.
He soon became the leader of the Transcendental Movement, a primarily American philosophical initiative. Emerson’s first book, entitled ‘Nature,’ remains probably the most thorough expression of Transcendentalism.
His beliefs can be summarized as promoting individualism. People should follow their own path through life. There is no need to follow others. Independent-minded people should feel free to speak out.
They should avoid conforming to society and its unwritten rules and traditions. He promoted self-reliance, urging that no-one should worry about what others think of them. The same self-reliance had to be the core of an individual’s relationship with God and Nature.
When making decisions, every individual must rely on their own judgment. This was an idea at the core of Transcendentalism and one that Emerson promoted repeatedly.
Throughout his life, Emerson published a series of essays, books, and poems. He also gave hundreds of lectures and speeches. These are the sources of many famous Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes. Some of his ideas were revolutionary for their time. Yet they have survived through the years and are just as relevant today. We are still finding inspiration and hope in what he has to say.
During his lifetime, Emerson was considered to be an influential promoter of the principle of individualism. He spoke in favor of individual liberty and stressed the importance of freedom of thought and speech.
However, he accepted that each of us has limitations to what we can achieve. We all have faults that make us imperfect. Through self-reliance, however, we can minimize those faults and overcome most of the limitations placed on us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you are comes to you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting… Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
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
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect… A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo quotes to inspire success
Love, and you shall be loved.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
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
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood.
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
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
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
A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
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
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
Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
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
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is a journey, not a destination.
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
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
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
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
Inspirational Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the length of life, but the depth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
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
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You become what you think about all day long.
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
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.
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
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes are nuggets of wisdom you would do well to read. Each one will speak to you in a particular situation. Make a note of the ones you think will influence you most, and keep them by you. Many of them are short, pithy quotes that will be easy to remember.