Ralph Waldo Emerson
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA 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.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAdopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll diseases run into one, old age.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll mankind love a lover.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAlways do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAmerica is another name for opportunity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAn ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs soon as there is life there is danger.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBe an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBeauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBeauty without expression is boring.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBeauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBefore we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBuild a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBut a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBut genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBy necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Ralph Waldo EmersonCan anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
Ralph Waldo EmersonCause and effect are two sides of one fact.
Ralph Waldo EmersonCharacter is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
Ralph Waldo EmersonCharacter is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Ralph Waldo EmersonChildren are all foreigners.
Ralph Waldo EmersonCommon sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Ralph Waldo EmersonCuriosity is lying in wait for every secret.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDeath comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDivine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDo not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDo the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDoing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.
Ralph Waldo EmersonDon't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEach age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEarth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEnthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery burned book enlightens the world.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man I meet is in some way my superior.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery wall is a door.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEverything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFlowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFoolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFor every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFor every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFor everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFriendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGenius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGetting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGive a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGod enters by a private door into every individual.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGod screens us evermore from premature ideas.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGood men must not obey the laws too well.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGreat geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGreat hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGreat men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHappy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHe who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf a man can… make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf in the least particular one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and curiosity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is not length of life, but depth of life.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.'
Ralph Waldo EmersonJudge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
Ralph Waldo EmersonKnowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLet me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLet us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLife consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLittle minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLove of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMake the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMake yourself necessary to somebody.
Ralph Waldo EmersonManners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMoney often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNature always wears the colors of the spirit.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNature hates calculators.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNever lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNobody can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing external to you has any power over you.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo EmersonO Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOnce you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOne must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur best thoughts come from others.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPassion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPictures must not be too picturesque.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPower and speed be hands and feet.
Ralph Waldo EmersonReality is a sliding door.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRepose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, repose in energy.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRevolutions go not backward.
Ralph Waldo EmersonScience does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo EmersonShallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSociety is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSome books leave us free and some books make us free.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe faith that stands on authority is not faith.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe highest revelation is that God is in every man.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe years teach much which the days never know.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is a tendency for things to right themselves.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is also something excellent in every audience, the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is always safety in valor.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThis time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThough we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTo be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTo be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTo know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTrust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTrust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTrust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTruth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTruth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTruth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
Ralph Waldo EmersonUnless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Ralph Waldo EmersonUse what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWashington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe acquire the strength we have overcome.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are wiser than we know.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe must be our own before we can be another's.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat you are comes to you.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhen it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhen nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhen we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWho hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWho you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhy need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Ralph Waldo EmersonWin as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWith the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWords are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWrite it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo EmersonYou cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson