Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It sometimes occurs that memory has a personality of its own and volunteers or refuses its information at its will, not at mine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes. Blind - yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love for finding what he seeks, and only that.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Can we never extract the tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

Ralph Waldo Emerson