Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Every natural action is graceful.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should.

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of.

And truly it demands something god like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

Let the man stand on his feet. Let religion cease to be occasional; and the pulses of thought that go to the borders of the universe, let them proceed from the bosom of the Household.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

A man is a god in ruins.

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.

When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematical, and is dependent on the success of his manners.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.

The pest of society is egotists.

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Dare to love God without mediator or veil.

It is defeat which educates us.

Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.

he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith

The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.

Who are the farmer's servants? ... Geology and Chemistry, the quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the lightning of the cloud, the castings of the worm, the plough of the frost.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation.

We never touch but at points.

Music and Wine are one.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Science finds it methods.

Do what you fear and your fear will die.

I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.

But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?

The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength.

Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

Man was born to be rich, or to inevitably grow rich, by the use of his faculties: by the union of thought with nature.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.