Famous Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotations

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"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nature hates calculators."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The first wealth is health."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The ancestor of every action is a thought."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Children are all foreigners."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every hero becomes a bore at last."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All mankind loves a lover."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The less government we have the better."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only gift is a portion of thyself."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is a tendency for things to right themselves."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We are prisoners of ideas."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We do what we must, and call it by the best names."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We gain the strength of the temptation we resist."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered"
by 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."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Great geniuses have the shortest biographies."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Make yourself necessary to somebody."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing external to you has any power over you."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"People only see what they are prepared to see."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Power and speed be hands and feet."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth, so much bread."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Life is a festival only to the wise."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every wall is a door."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Good men must not obey the laws too well."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?"
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Do what you know and perception is converted into character."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He is great who confers the most benefits."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Accept your genius and say what you think."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All the great ages have been ages of belief."
by 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."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson


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