Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The household is a school of power. There, within the door, learn the tragi-comedy of human life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
An actually existent fly is more important than a possibly existent angel.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,--these, and the wish to serve,--to add somewhat to the well-being of men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who are made up of the same elements?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot detach an atom from its holdings, or strip off from it the electricity, gravitation, chemic affinity, or the relation to light and heat, and leave the atom bare.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.

Ralph Waldo Emerson