Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My tongue is prone to lose the way,Not so my pen, for in a letterWe have not better things to say,But surely put them better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chemistry began by saying it would change the baser metals into gold. By not doing that it has done much greater things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whipof the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the entire sermon will go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What we know, is a point to what we do not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.

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
It is in bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All ages of belief have been great; all of unbelief have been mean.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When at last in a race a new principle appears, an idea--that conserves it; ideas only save races.

Ralph Waldo Emerson