Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articulation.

A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.

The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.

God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.

"In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life~~no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair."

Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.

I have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay atall. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly.

Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.

The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.

He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.

Beware of what you want-for you will get it.

If I am the devil's child, I will live then, by the devil.

Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.

If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none.

A determined man, by his very attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, and begins to conquer.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.

We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.

We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also.

The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon.

A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that,and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.

Every thing admonishes us how needlessly long life is.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

In imitation is a bit suicide.

Do you love me? Means at last do you see the same truth I see? If you do, we are happy together; but when presently one of us passes into the perception of a new truth, we are divorced and the force of all nature cannot hold us to each other.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expect everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate good. . . . If we will take the good we find, . . . we shall have heaping measures. . . .

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.'

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his.

The best part of health is fine disposition

The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.