Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2,528 Sourced Quotes

This world we live in is but thickened light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and…it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path…. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things have their laws as well as men; things refuse to be trifled with.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days, and more of them, than any other country.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster-bank or among the seaweed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I spoke of friendship, but my friends and I are fishes in our habit. As for taking Thoreau's arm, I should as soon take the arm of an elm tree.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul refuses limits and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten; bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. I think, there is a restlessness in our people, which argues want of character. All educated Americans, first or last, go to Europe; — perhaps, because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of this country might suggest. An eminent teacher of girls said, "the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe." Can we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is his, who has money to go over it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson