Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.

We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

How painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality! It is next worst to receiving one

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Do your work, but do your thing.

Justice satisfies everybody, and justice alone.

Liberty is a slow fruit.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

Our best history is still poetry.

Don't choose the better person, choose the person who makes a better you.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquillity that religion is powerless to bestow.

Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and...it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path.... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.

The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.

And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.

We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament

We walk alone in the world.

Everyone I meet is in some way my superior.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.

Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself.

All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of man's limbs and senses.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

Truth is the summit of being.

Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

Nature turns all malfaisance to good.

There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion.

On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.

It is rare to find a man who believes in his own thoughts or speaks that which he is created to say. As nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing, so nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own...feel yourself, and be not daunted by things...The light by which we see this world comes out from the soul of the observer.

By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.

The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says "Do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.

It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.

Desire is possibility seeking expression.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.

For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys.

Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.

There is no history; only biography.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

Intemperance is the only vulgarity.

We are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know is a point to what we do not know."

A home kept to the end of display is impossible to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought.

If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many.