Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.

A beautiful soul always dwells in a beautiful world.

Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.

Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? I am well assured that the Questioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring me the answers also, in due time.

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

He who loves goodness harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God.

How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

Life too near paralyses art.

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.

Invention breeds invention.

Let a man behave in his own house as a guest.

The laws of light and of heat translate each other;-so do the laws of sound and colour; and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.

The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.

The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.

I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

Man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain.

The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

There comes a time in each man's education in which he comes to the conclusion that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society in in conspiracy against each one of its members.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.

The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.

The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far.

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.

It is in rugged crises, in unbearable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of the question, that the angel is shown.

There is no true orator who is not a hero.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.

When a man meets his make, society begins.

The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open.

Only that mind draws me which I cannot read.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

Obedience alone gives the right to command.