Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2,529 Sourced Quotes

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Natures abhors the old and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby—so helpless and so ridiculous.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
Drink the wild air's salubrity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but can not steer their feet
Clear of the grave.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life - no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expect everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate good.... If we will take the good we find,... we shall have heaping measures....

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the president has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand behind the throne.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Massachusetts has a good climate, but it needs a little anthracite coal.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity with nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits opersons called high and worthy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson