Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love; obey thy heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Conduct of Life
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essay: Nature
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.

We become what we think about all day long.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

I hate quotations.

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

As we grow old?the beauty steals inward.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The world belongs to the energetic.

Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.

Nature hates calculators.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Letters and Social Aims: The Comic, 1876
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.

The glory of friendship is not the outstreched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Society and Solitude: Works and Days, 1870
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Journals, 1824
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Address on The Method of Nature, 1841
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.

Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.

What a new face courage puts on everything.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Journal (May 1849)
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

The less government we have the better.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - (attributed)
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Letters and Social Aims: Quotation and Originality, 1876
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 - An Essay on Self-Reliance
To be great is to be misunderstood.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - "American Civilization", The Atlantic Monthly, 1862
Hitch your wagon to a star.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

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

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

The people are to be taken in very small doses.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

I hate quotations.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

We are prisoners of ideas.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Letters and Social Aims: Progress of Culture, 1876
Every artist was first an amateur.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Method of Nature (1841)
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Self-Reliance", 1841
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Letters and Social Aims (Quotation and Originality)
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

The reward for a thing well done is to have done it.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...

We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting the best property of all -- friends?

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self Reliance (essay)
...the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

The faith that stand on authority is not faith.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.

The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show for any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself.

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Common sense is as rare as genius.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Society and Solitude
The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops?no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Nature"
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self Reliance
Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - New England Reformers, 1844
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.

The first wealth is health.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

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

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Society and Solitude (1870)
As soon as there is life there is danger.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Natural History of Intellect (1893)
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Journals, 1839
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Imitation is suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Letters and Social Aims: The Comic, 1876
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.

Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - "The Rhodora"
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.

Children are all foreigners.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - quoting a friend
Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays, First Series: Prudence, 1841
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.

Work is victory.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson