Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (1444 Quotes)

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power and power because it is as good as money

Love of beauty is taste.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.

When it is dark enough, men see the stars.

The soul is no traveler the wise man stays at home... Traveling is a fool's paradise.

Our expenses are all for conformity.

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

Wisdom is to finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark can fly like a hawk in the air can see atoms like a gnat can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates not only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.

Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat

There is no way to success in our art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.

Self trust is the essence of heroism.

Common sense is as rare as genius.

Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.

America is a country of young men.

For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear,
Dost love our manners?

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

A man's library is a sort of harem.

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

I can find my biography in every fable that I read.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

Commerce is of trivial import love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle it would whip a right it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

What you are thunders so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say. What you do rings so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

We go to Europe to be Americanized.

The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot their owning is not graceful seems to be a compromise of their character they seem to steal their own dividends.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

That man is idle who can do something better.

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Money often costs too much.

Extremes meet and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.

The force of character is cumulative.

There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.