Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no architect
Can build as the Muse can;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us arerushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of man's limbs and senses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articulation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture...food for our mind, as well as our body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our impatience of miles, when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our statute is a currency which we stamp with our own portrait.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A beautiful person among the Greeks, was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods; and we can pardonpride, when a woman possesses such a figure that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; a science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences - I call it Dialectic - which is the Intellect discriminating the false and the true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament

Ralph Waldo Emerson