Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes & Sayings


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Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


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


Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


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