Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.

Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.

Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.

O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.

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.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

You can take better care of your secret than another can.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

Let ideas establish their legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become big masters.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew: The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.

Always maintain your common sense and artful skills, and funnel it all into plain enough dealings.

He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.

These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.

Among the map makers of each generation are the risk takers, those who see the opportunities, seize the moment and expand man's vision of the future

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so well, that it is sure that it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power.

[T]omorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well & serenely, & with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day ... is too dear with its hopes & invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.

A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.

Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen but society has chosen for us.

Meek young men grow up in libraries.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.

Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before newflashes of moral worth.

England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them.