Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The street is full of humiliations to the proud.

Human beings cannot endure the geological chaos they encounter under the soil of their own gardens.

More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.

Self-command is the main elegance.

Any work looks wonderful to me except the one which I can do.

But also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is not only representative, but participant. Like can onlybe known by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of the thing.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings.

An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.

Science, Nature,-O, I've yearned to open some page.

That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.

Genius is power, talent is applicability.

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.

I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind - whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world - is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. Jesus belonged to the race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul. One man was true to what is in you and me. He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.

Cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist,-- Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device, . . . . All things wait for and divine him,-- How shall I dare to malign him?

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

Invention breeds invention. No sooner is the electric telegraph devised than gutta-percha, the very material it requires, is found. The aeronaut is provided with gun-cotton, the very fuel he wants for his balloon.

Some will always be above others.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.

What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.

Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind.

There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.

We judge of man's wisdom by his hope.

No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory.

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning.

Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!

The house is a castle which the King cannot enter.

The religions are obsolete when the reforms do not proceed from them.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.

Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.