Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)



    Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

    It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

    Nature is too thin a screen the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.

    The pleasure of life is according to the man who lives it, and not according to the work or the place



    We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.


    To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius.




    My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.




    Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him.



    A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion.

    A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.


    I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

    All successful men have agreed in one thing, --they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.

    Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.



    There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.



    The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.

    Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

    It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.



    If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods

    Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.

    This time,like all times, is a good time, if we but know what to do with it.



    Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful


    O fair and stately maid, whose eyes Were kindled in the upper skies At the same torch that lighted mine.

    Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.


    God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.



    We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

    We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade.


    Related Authors


    Ralph Waldo Emerson - Lord Byron - John Keats - Horace - Edgar Allan Poe - e. e. cummings - Dante Alighieri - William Somerville - Jorge Luis Borges - Elizabeth Bishop


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