Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

Every advantage has its tax.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

I hate quotations.

Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done. But I'm telling you honestly that it doesn't surprise me. I knew I could do it.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

Cut a word and it will bleed.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

As the traveler who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science

a word of contempt often in his mouth.

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth . . .

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design - and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients

Let us treat the men and women well treat them as if they were real perhaps they are.

Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. The Conservative

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.

Nature and literature are subjective phenomena every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment

Two sorts of writers possess genius those who think, and those who cause others to think.

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause

All great natures delight in stability all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.

Sentimentalists. . . adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel. . . .

From Washington, proverbially the city of distances, through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness an open and noble temper.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Thought...quickly tends to convert itself into a power, And organizes a huge instrumentality of means.

Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light

Cunning is strength withheld.

Insist on yourself never imitate.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.