Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man; she is immensely rich, he is welcome to her entire goods, which he speaks no word, only leaves over doors ajar, hall, store room, & cellar. He may do as he will: if he takes her hint & uses her goods, she speaks no word; if he blunders & starves, she says nothing.

There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.

A man of no conversation should smoke.

there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues.

There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Let there be worse cotton and better men.

You never know how you look through other people's eyes.

Traveling is a fool's paradise.

Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.

Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

Ne te quaesiveris extra." (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

Others can get in your way temporarily, but only you can get out of your way permanently. Our best thoughts come from others.

Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art.

The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser.

Everything is prospective, and man is to live hereafter. That the world is for his education is the only sane solution of the enigma.

The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.

A man's action is only a poicture book of his creed.

Each moment of the year has its own beauty.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community

Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn; nature's oldest force is as good as new.

Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them.

We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.

Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.

The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results.

Our faith comes in moments . . . yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear what you say.