Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, forthat is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living it.

Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.

Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

Labor is God's education.

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.

Real men don't conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.

The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows whither.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .

Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes.

The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread.

A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

In Nature, all is useful, all is beautiful

A beautiful woman is a practical poet.

As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affecting.

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues.

Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know.

There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals.

Be not the slave of your own past.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason.

Genius is its own end.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.

Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.

Tart, cathartic virtue.

Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear.

Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.

Nature tells every secret once.

The longer we live the more we must endure the elementary existence of men and women; and every brave heart must treat society asa child, and never allow it to dictate.

Everything has its price - and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained... it is impossible to get anything without this price.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

A great man is always willing to be little.

No facts to me are sacred; none are profane.