Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations!

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,--muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.

Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.

When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.

Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.

The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend... The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.

Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but Intelligence.

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

I see it only that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the supreme being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature.

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.

We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws.

To be great, you must be misunderstood

Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.

Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.

The finished man of the world must eat of every apple once.

Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.

Children are all foreigners.

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. ... These road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.

If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.

Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread and meat.

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.