Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson


He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A fly is as untamable as a hyena.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great man is always willing to be little.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man in debt is so far a slave.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All diseases run into one, old age.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of you first.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All mankind love a lover.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always do what you are afraid to do.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
America is another name for opportunity.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
As soon as there is life there is danger.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be an opener of doors.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty without expression is boring.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Between eighteen and twenty, life is like an exchange where one buys stocks, not with money, but with actions. Most men buy nothing.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cards were at first for benefits designed, sent to amuse, not to enslave the mind.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children are all foreigners.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Concentration is the secret of strengths in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Earth laughs in flowers.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every burned book enlightens the world.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every principle is a war-note. Whoever attempts to carry out the rule of right and love and freedom must take his life in his hand.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done. But I'm telling you honestly that it doesn't surprise me. I knew I could do it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
God enters by a private door into every individual.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
God screens us evermore from premature ideas.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
He builded better than he knew; the conscious stone to beauty grew.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson