Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2,528 Sourced Quotes

Let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of drunkenness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The multitude of the sick shall not make us deny the existence of health.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius.... They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether their be any who understand it or not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.‬

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effiminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson