Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.

Find the journey's end in every step.

The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

Genius appeals to the future.

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

The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Flowers so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their beautiful generations concern not us: we havehad our day; now let the children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness.

No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term "abandonment" to describe the self- surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.

The world is his who can see through its pretension.

No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.

Live in the fields, and God will give you lectures on natural philosophy every day.

The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

People who know how to act are never preachers.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you."

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestor.

No man can have society upon his own terms.

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.

The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which intimidatethe pale scholar.

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.

Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Football is four 15-minute quarters. Plus timeouts and commercials.

Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride.

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.

The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery?

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.

Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation - this to to have succeeded.