Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and so true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul lets no man go without some visitations and holy-days of a diviner presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know is a point to what we do not know."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind - whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world - is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. Jesus belonged to the race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul. One man was true to what is in you and me. He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine,--and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he ispraised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is readyto sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,--muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What connection do the books show between the fifty or sixty chemical elements and the historical eras?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
For splendor, there must somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the house may go brave, the members must be plainly clad, and the town must save that the State may spend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson