Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love; obey thy heart.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world belongs to the energetic.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Activity is contagious.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power and speed be hands and feet.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson