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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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727 Timeless Quotes Inspiring Self-Discovery, Happiness, and Life's Adventures

Discover the profound wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson through his timeless quotes. From inspiring words on self-discovery and happiness to embracing life's adventures, delve into the brilliance of Emerson's thoughts that will leave you pondering and uplifted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, known as Waldo, was a renowned American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet. He played a leading role in the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and was regarded as a champion of individualism. Emerson's philosophy of transcendentalism is best expressed in his essay "Nature" and his speech "The American Scholar," which were highly influential in American intellectual thought. His essays, including "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul," explore ideas of individuality, freedom, and the connection between the soul and the world. Emerson's work had a profound impact on future thinkers, writers, and poets.

Born in Boston in 1803 to a Unitarian minister father and a mother of English ancestry, Emerson grew up surrounded by strong female influences. He attended Harvard College and later became a teacher before spending two years living in nature to study and write. During this time, he faced poor health and traveled to seek warmer climates. It was during his stay in St. Augustine that he encountered the harsh reality of slavery firsthand. This experience further shaped his beliefs and advocacy for individual freedom.

Overall, Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas on transcendentalism influenced American intellectual thought significantly. His belief in individuality, freedom, and mankind's potential for realization has left a lasting impact on subsequent generations of thinkers and writers alike.

✵ 25. May 1803 – 27. April 1882   •   Other names Ральф Эмерсон
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson: 727   quotes 86   likes

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Wisdom

“Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles

Age , Disease , Nature

“Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass
From these companions power and grace.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Woodnotes II http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/wood_notes_ii.htm, st. 4
1840s, Poems (1847)

Love , Money , Bird , Solitude

“Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

St. 2
1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm

“Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Solution
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Rhodora http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/rhodora.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Beauty

“If the colleges were better, if they … had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, — if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, — we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Celebration of Intellect (1861)

Truth , Drawing

“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Life , Music

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior

Love , Life , Way , Happiness

“The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Circles
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality

Quotes , Memory , Drawing

“It may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Question

“The soul is subject to dollars.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Soul

“Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20569&c=323
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Fate

“For there's no rood has not a star above it;
The cordial quality of pear or plum
Ascends as gladly in a single tree,
As in broad orchards resonant with bees;
And every atom poises for itself,
And for the whole.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Musketaquid http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/musketaquid.htm, st. 5
1840s, Poems (1847)

Star , Tree , Bee

“I like a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see,
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

St. 1
1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm

Love , Faith , Smile , Soul

“We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

11 April 1834
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Love

“Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Culture
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Solitude

“The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

World , Law , Nature

“The cup of life is not so shallow
That we have drained the best
That all the wine at once we swallow
And lees make all the rest.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1827 journal entry reproduced in Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 82

Life , Wine

“I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), New England Reformers

World , Education , Fear , Country

“All our progress is an unfolding, like the 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. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellect
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841)

Truth , Knowledge

“Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each and All
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

Life

“The days …. come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Works and Days http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=148
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

Distant

“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Books , World , Soul

“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.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

Life , Housing

“You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59

Reading

“Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fable
1840s, Poems (1847)

“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

History

“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

Epigraph to History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

Soul

“Blessed are those who have no talent!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

February 1850
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Education" http://books.google.com/books?id=iRAWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Respect+the+child+Be+not+too+much+his+parent+Trespass+not+on+his+solitude%22&pg=PA116#v=onepage, Lectures and biographical sketches (1883), p.116

For Parents , Parent , Solitude

“Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Marriage , World , Question

“He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty , Dead

“I think no virtue goes with size;
The reason of all cowardice
Is, that men are overgrown,
And, to be valiant, must come down
To the titmouse dimension.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Titmouse http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1176/, st. 5
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Men , Thinking

“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Widely misattributed to Emerson on the Internet, this quote is actually taken from Alfred North Whitehead's essay "Harvard: The Future" (The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936.)
Misattributed

For Team

“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Snow-Storm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Age , World , Art , Appearance

“Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits (1856)

Home , Reading , Country

“Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"”

Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits (1856), reprinted in The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 2 (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870), p. 206 ( full text at GoogleBooks http://books.google.com/books?id=21IRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA206)

Money

“Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Voluntaries
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Justice , Fight

“Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Merlin's Song II http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20584&c=323
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Men , Truth , Waiting

“What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

Shakespeare; or, The Poet
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Life , Religion , Behavior , Lovers

“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.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Life , Money , Law , Beauty

“I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

World , Law , Thinking

“There are men who astonish and delight, men who instruct and guide. Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character
1880s, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)

Men , Truth

“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introduction
1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836)

God , Age , Religion , History