Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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

“Do the thing and you will have the power.”

“A man is known by the books he reads.”

“Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting.”

“A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.”

“Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.”

“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”

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

“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”

“As we grow old… the beauty steals inward.”

“Books are for nothing but to inspire”

“The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.”

“To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.”

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

“People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.”

“I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.”

“Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares”

“Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.”

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.”

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”

“Moderation in all things, especially moderation.”

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.”

“Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.”

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

“Love what is simple and beautiful.
These are the essentials.”

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.”

“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards”

“Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“Common sense is as rare as genius.”

“The only gift is a portion of thyself.”

“Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.”

“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”

“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart….”

“Its the not the Destination, It's the journey.”

“Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

“When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.”

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”

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

“The never-ending task of self improvement.”

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”

“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

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

“No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

“Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”