Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every good reader will easily recall expressions or passages in works of pure science which have given him the same pleasure which he seeks in professed poets.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But we need not fear that we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson