Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Man (219 Quotes)

As every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.

The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

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

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby so helpless and so ridiculous.

Women should not be expected to write, or fight, or build, or compose scores she does all by inspiring men to do all

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

What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good.

The walking of man and all animals, is a falling forward.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

Slavery it is that makes slavery freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Man is timid and apologetic he is no longer upright he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or sage

Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

Every man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth it is the beginning of wisdom.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a God playing the fool.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

Never utter the truism but live it among men.

Self Esteem'It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye . . .

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe the key to all ages is Imbecility imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments victims of gravity,

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

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

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.

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

A man is related to all nature.

For me, commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys

The gentleman is a man of truth.

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

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen librarya company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

Great men are they who see that ... thoughts rule the world.

Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has, until he has learned to use that little better

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.

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

A man is a little thing while he works by and for himself But when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, he is godlike.