Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2,529 Sourced Quotes

The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where is he who seeing a thousand men useless and unhappy, and making the whole region forlorn by their inaction, and conscious himself of possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his call to go and be their king?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A right rule for a club would be, Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised andshocked, who do and let do, and let be, who sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great deal for granted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What drops of all the sea of our science are baled up! and by what accident it is that these are exposed, when so many secrets sleep in nature!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You must have eyes of science to see in the seed its nodes...

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more ofthese drones perish, the better for the hive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The light by which we see in this world comes out from the soul of the observer. Wherever any noble sentiment dwelt, it made the faces and houses around to shine. Nay, the powers of this busy brain are miraculous and illimitable.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Astronomy is excellent; but it must come up into life to have its full value, and not remain there in globes and spaces.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is the ring of his spells,
And the play of his miracles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson