Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

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

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

The religion that is afraid of science dishoners God and commits suicide.

For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

Nature never wears a mean appearance. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense of mind.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I looked someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted thier answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I as looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I could answer. It took me a while and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with That I am nobody but myself.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

Our faith comes in moments ... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

'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 unmistakably 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.

Speech is power speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.

There was never a poet who had not the heart in the right place

A right rule for a club would be, Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised and shocked, who do and let do, and let be, who sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great deal for granted.

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

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

I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Every man's task is his life-preserver.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Now love and pride, alas, in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.

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

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

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.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

A good intention but fixed and resolute bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment and even obstacles and opposition will but make us 'like the fabled specter-ships,' which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.

This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues.

All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Good bye, proud world I'm going home Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

The first and last lesson of religion is The things that are seen are temporal things that are unseen are eternal.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

We feed on genius great men exist that there might be greater men.

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.

The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.