Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Go often to the house of thy friend, weeds choke the unused path.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Greatness The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

Common sense is the wick of the candle.

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.

Self trust is the first secret of success.

Everything runs to excess every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

The human body is the magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works, and the education of the will is the flowering and result of all this geology and astronomy.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

Truth is too simple for us we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

Sanity is not being subdued by your means.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at least a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

The world is his who can see through its pretension.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The manwho knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million andthen some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods,ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do, but inside, the terrible freedom.

Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.

Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

The highest virtue is always against the law.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

We are prisoners of ideas.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something he has been put on his wits on his manhood he has gained the facts learns his ignorance is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

Men are better than this theology.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it. . . . Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

The secret of drunkeness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Who can ... guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes.