Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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

“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.”

“What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.”

“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.”

“Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours.”

“Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.”

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.”

“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.”

“There are books… which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.”

“The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.”

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

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.”

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”

“Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”

“In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.”

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

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

“He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.”

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”

“Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.”

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.”

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going”

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

“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

“I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”

“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”

“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.”

“We boil at different degrees.”

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

“This world belongs to the energetic.”

“The First wealth is health.”

“Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.”

“Be an opener of doors”

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

“Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.”

“Thou art to me a delicious torment.”

“Money often costs too much.”

“There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”

“Hitch your wagon to a star.”

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

“Ne te quaesiveris extra." (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)”

“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”