Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2,529 Sourced Quotes

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk but after the counsel of his own bosom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought.... We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself.... The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Born for success he seemed,
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The vanishing volatile froth of the present, which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine record of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Presently we pass to some other object which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
So is music an asylum. It takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson