Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

No book was ever written down by any but itself.

Youth is everywhere in place.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.

Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.

God is Unity, but always works in variety.

The order of things consents to virtue.

In the order of nature, we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.

Good criticism is very rare and always precious.

In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.

Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.

Fear is cruel and mean.

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

Travel is a fools paradise.

In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,--do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

The remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode.It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up.

Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.

A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit.

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

Research is not seeing what others do not see, it is seeing the same thing as other people and thinking what they do not.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.

Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself.

God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful or great, but He does intend us all to be friends.

Tis good-will makes intelligence.

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.

The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict.

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.