Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays: First Series (1841)

100 Sourced Quotes

View all Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — "Always do what you are afraid to do."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love is omnipresent in nature as motive and reward. Love is our highest word and the synonym of God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The heart has its sabbaths and jubilees in which the world appears as a hymeneal feast, and all natural sounds and the circle of the seasons are erotic odes and dances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson