Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.

If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book a good head cannot read amiss in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of today.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

We are much better believers in immortality than we can give grounds for. The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in propositions.

Our best thoughts come from others.

People say law but they mean wealth.

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

Peace has its victories, but it takes a brave man to win them.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

When a man meets his make, society begins.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

On being asked, Whence is the flower?

The power of a man increases steadily by continuing in one direction.

Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.

Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

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

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

Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. The Conservative

Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay.

Work and thou canst escape the reward whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions.

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear

The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.

A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coatskirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible destruction.

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.

THE POET A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

Character is that which can do without success.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is 'Let there be truth between us two forevermore.'

To judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of a narrow and very English mind of one who paid for his rare elevation by general tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were of no value.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Our best history is still poetry.

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.

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