Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

Wait, and thy soul shall speak.

Every man is the inlet and may become the outlet of all there is in God.

We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.

In the woods we return to reason and faith.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?

A man cannot speak but he judges himself

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

A man must know how to estimate a sour face. The sour face of the multitude, like thier sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and the newspaper directs.

The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.

As long as any man exists, there is some need of him.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

What you do thunders above your head so loudly, I cannot hear the words you speak.

It is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far as then need is.

Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

Wherever the truth is injured, defend it.

An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Doing well is a result of doing good.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.

The finest poetry was first experience.

Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.

Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God.

Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Our statute is a currency which we stamp with our own portrait.

One idea lights a thousand candles.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion of well-doing and daring.

No nation has produced anything like his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, and none in which he has not said the commanding word.

Each man has an aptitude born with him. Do your work.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.

The world is plentiful with honey, but only the humble bee can collect it.

I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.