Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

In the vaunted works of Art, The master-stroke is Nature's part

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of a sympathetic life.

There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or state, or letters and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man that is all anybody can tell you about it.

People do not deserve to have good writings they are so pleased with the bad.

Works of great intellect are great only by comparison with each other.

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

Two man talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom. mettle spirited bottom capacity to endure strain.

All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.

Life is a progress and not a station.

I like a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,

We are parlor soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun.

The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.

Old age brings along with its uglinesses the comfort that you will soon be out of it, which ought to be a substantial relief to such discontented pendulums as we are.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

'Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

It is implied in all superior culture that a complete man would need no auxiliaries to his personal presence

They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. from Self-Reliance.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.

A poet in verse or prose must have a sensuous eye, but an intellectual co-perception.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world as invalids pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live my life is for itself, and not for spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask for primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from a man to his actions.

It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in

Work'I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. Mrs. Yule stated in The Docket, Feb. 1912, that she copied this in her handbook from a lecture delivered by Emerson. The mouse-trap quotation was the occasion of a long controversy, owing to Elbert Hubbards claim to its authorship.

Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar.

Those are a success who have lived well, laughed often, and loved much who have gained the respect of intelligent people and the love of children, who have filled their niche and accomplished their task, who leave the world better than they found it, whether by a perfect poem or a rescued soul who never lacked appreciation of the earth's beauty or failed to express it who looked for the best in others and gave the best they had.

Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

For the world was built in order And the atoms march in tune Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon.

A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty.

Tart, cathartic virtue.

Obedience alone gives the right to command.

Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.