Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotations

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

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

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

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

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

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

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

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

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

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

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.