Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

America is a country of young men.

Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.

The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, than any other country.

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whom we took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a secret virtue never suspected - that he can paint what has occurred and what must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw it done before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will, and can make them do gladly what an hour ago they would not believe that they could be led to do at all.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

It is better to be a thorn in the side of a friend than an echo.

Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.

The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand.

A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of nature do undulate and flow.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Excite the soul, and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear; the world itself loses its solidity, nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.

First be a good animal.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Love is the essence of God.

When it's dark enough men see stars.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

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.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.

Generalization is always a new influx of divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.

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

Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful

Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.

The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, "All summer in the field, and all winter in the study." And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.

The eye is the painter and the ear the singer.

The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.

Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.

Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.

There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone tocount myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.

Beauty rests on necessities.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

Genius Borrows nobly.

To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

Power resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state.

I am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and I should relish every hour and what it brought me, the pot-luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room.

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.