Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even; when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Buddhist, who thanks no man, who says "Do not flatter your benefactors," but who, in his conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only money of God is God. He never pays with any thing less, or any thing else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply, —
"'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign & accidental. I am the heir of uncontained beauty and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson