Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art.

There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.

Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us.

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.

Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer.

A man is known by the books he reads.

Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.

Every man contemplates an angel in his future self.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

The time is coming when all men will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, buta sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear.

For each thorn, there's a rosebud... For each twilight - a dawn... For each trial - the strength to carry on, For each storm cloud - a rainbow... For each shadow - the sun... For each parting - sweet memories when sorrow is done.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.

The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

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.

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact.

Morality is the object of government.

The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.

The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations.

Live, let live, and help live

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.

The years teach much which the days never know.

There is no God dare wrong a worm.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.

Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.

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.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Ten percent of people can think, another ten percent of people think that they think, and eighty percent of people would rather die than be made to think.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.