Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes & Sayings

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is upheld by antagonism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plant your DREAMS and miracles will grow. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.
Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you are shouts at me so loudly that I can't hear a word you say. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We walk alone in the world. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man believes he has a greater possibility. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man is at once acquainted with the geometric foundation of things and with their festal splendor, his poetry is exact and his arithmetic musical. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some eyes threaten like a loaded and levelled pistol, and others are as insulting as hissing or kicking; some have no more expression than blueberries, while others are as deep as a well which you can fall into. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not engaged to Christianity by decent forms, or saving ordinances; it is not usage, it is not what I do not understand, that binds me to it
let these be the sandy foundations of falsehoods. What I revere and obey in it is its reality, its boundless charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to my mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes with my reason through all its representation of God and His Providence; and the persuasion and courage that come out thence to lead me upward and onward. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The frolic architecture of the snow. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rootedlike oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He, who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his hand. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ruin or blank, that we see when we look at nature is in our own eye ... Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed neither can be perfect without the other. — 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. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever it is, it's better in the wind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Natural science sharpens the discrimination. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie; their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is what he thinks about all day long — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's action is only a poicture book of his creed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Or whipping its rough surface for a trout ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold it's great proportions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music and Wine are one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be poised, wise and our own today. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow — 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 cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much sympathy with his tyranny, - is a familiar fact explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those names and words and forma, of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,
He knew not what to do, and so he read. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We learn that God IS; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every great man is unique. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is like wildflowers;
It's often found in the most unlikely places. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The the illuminated mind the whole world sparkles with light. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People only see what they are prepared to see. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The human body is a 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. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, - and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The richest of all lords is Use,
And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
Drink the wild air's salubrity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,
faint copies of an invisible archetype. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Say, what other metre is it
Than the meeting of the eyes?
Nature poureth into nature
Through the channels of that feature
Riding on the ray of sight,
Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,
Or for service, or delight,
Hearts to hearts their meaning show. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Standing on the bare ground,
my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,
all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Morality is the object of government. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live well, learn plenty, laugh often, love much. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. — Ralph Waldo Emerson