Best Ralph Waldo Quotes & Sayings

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself is to quote one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Others can get in your way temporarily, but only you can get out of your way permanently. Our best thoughts come from others. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best part of health is fine disposition — Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the best economist. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and love much ... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self ... this is to have succeeded. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a great treasure can be hidden in a small, selected library! A company of the wisest and the most deserving people from all the civilized countries of the world, for thousands of years, can make the results of their studies and their wisdom available to us. The thought which they might not even reveal to their best friends is written here in clear words for us, people from another century. Yes, we should be grateful for the best books, for the best spiritual achievements in our lives. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON — Leo Tolstoy

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mob. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of debt and depression and calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best history is still poetry. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. — 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

As gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The unsaid part is the best of every discourse. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien. — 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

The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we can't piece together the puzzle of our own lives, remember the best view of a puzzle is from above. Let Him help put you together. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;
and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We ought to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and practices of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. On every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgement more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Between cultivated minds the first interview is the best. — 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

The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expect everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate good ... If we will take the good we find, ... we shall have heaping measures ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the law of prosperity: When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions. — Ralph Waldo Trine

The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always a best way of doing everything. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the least inequalities in the culture of the understanding; for example, in the perception of differences. Therefore is Space, and therefore Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call the best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the earth's beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate thier virtue or vice by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath ever moment ... One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zsig zag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficent distance and it straightens itslef to the average tendency. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The kitchen clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnaean classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best nations are those most widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a signal convenience is fame. Do we read all authors to grope our way to the best? No, but the world selects for us the best, and we select from these our best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON — Lama Surya Das

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,
a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eye is the best of artists. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Successful people live well, laugh often, and love much. They've filled a niche and accomplished tasks so as to leave the world better than they found it, while looking for the best in others, and giving the best they have. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walking has the best value as gymnastics of the mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every 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, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best thoughts come from others. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
Our valors are our best gods. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst ... They are for nothing but to inspire. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Books are the best type of influence of the past ... Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The cities drain the country of the best part of its population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, andthe country is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The land,
travel a whole day together,
looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success to the strongest, who are always, at last, the wisest and best. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,
a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best of life is conversation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;-and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber which thou sittest. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We say that every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. We measure our friends so. We know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault- finding brothers and sisters at home who will not spare him, but willpick and cavil, and tell the odious truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do what we must, and call it by the best names. — Ralph Waldo Emerson