Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who loves goodness harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is with-held, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson