Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

We go to Europe to be Americanized.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What torments of grief you endured from evils that never arrived.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some of your hurts you have cured And the sharpest you still have survived But what torments of grief you endured From the evil which never arrived.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good-bye proud world! I'm going home Thou are not my friend I am not thine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A woman's strength is the irresistible might of weakness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interests than it is theirs to find his weak point.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance arms us with terrible freedom so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge yet not the details but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful manly part or a poor drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions they have a substantial truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurl'd Here once the embattl'd farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When there is no vision people perish.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only reward of virtue is virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and ridiculous.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To finish the moment to find the journey's end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can see well into the past we can guess shrewdly in to the future but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
With the past I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man builds a fine house and now he has a master and a task for life is to furnish watch show it and keep it in repair the rest of his life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every sweet hath its sour every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever you do you need courage. ... To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world belongs to the energetic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. As to methods there may be a million and then some but the principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is success? To laugh often and much To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends To appreciate beauty To find the best in others To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child a garden patch or a redeemed social condition To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived That is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Excite the soul and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear the world itself loses its solidity nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict everything you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorrow makes us all children again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are some men above grief and some men below it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We never touch but at points.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself around your own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is more simple than greatness indeed to be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson