Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
For there's no rood has not a star above it;
The cordial quality of pear or plum
Ascends as gladly in a single tree,
As in broad orchards resonant with bees;
And every atom poises for itself,
And for the whole.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should be able to find the time in my face.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The victories of character are instant, and victories for all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man I meet is in some way my superior; and in that I can learn of him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

Ralph Waldo Emerson