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Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] American

Rank: 3
Poet (with poems), Essayist

Didactism, Fireside poets, Mysticism, Pantheism, Philosophy, Romanticism, Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

Nature, Beauty, Wisdom, Great, Friendship, Life, Truth, Art, Fear, Men, Peace, Science, Best, Death, Faith, Freedom, God, Intelligence, Learning, Love, Money, Power, Strength, Time, Trust, Age, Courage, Dreams, Good, Health, Imagination, Mom, Motivational, Positive, Alone, Anger, Brainy, Chance, Change, Experience, Failure, Future, Gardening, Happiness, History, Inspirational, Knowledge, Morning, New Year's, Patience, Society, Space, Travel, War, Women

Quote	Tags	Rank
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.	Wisdom	5
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.	Nature	101
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.	Friendship	102
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.	Art, Beauty, Love	104
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.	Anger, Peace	105
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.	Inspirational	106
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.	Great	107
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.	Friendship, Nature	108
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.	Beauty	109
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.	Beauty, God	110
The first wealth is health.	Health	111
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.	Best, New Year's	112
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.	Men, Strength	113
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.		114
The only way to have a friend is to be one.	Friendship	115
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.	Positive	116
Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.	Nature, Time	117
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.		118
Science does not know its debt to imagination.	Imagination, Science	119
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.	Gardening	120
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.	Failure, Time	121
Men are what their mothers made them.	Men, Mom	122
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.		123
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.	Great, Time	124
Beauty without expression is boring.	Beauty	125
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.		126
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.	Love, Men, Science	201
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.	Future, Life	202
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.	Trust	203
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.		204
I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.	Freedom	205
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.	Life	206
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?		207
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.		208
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.	Peace	209
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.	Motivational	210
It is not length of life, but depth of life.	Life	211
People only see what they are prepared to see.		212
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.	Travel	213
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.	Great	214
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.		215
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.		216
God enters by a private door into every individual.	Faith, God	217
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.	Life	218
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.		219
The earth laughs in flowers.	Nature	220
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.		221
We must be our own before we can be another's.	Brainy	222
Every artist was first an amateur.	Art	223
Hitch your wagon to a star.	Motivational	224
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.		225
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.	Change	226
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.	Strength, Wisdom	301
Always do what you are afraid to do.	Fear	302
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.	Wisdom	303
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.		304
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.	Death, Fear	305
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.	Trust	306
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.	Fear	307
Money often costs too much.	Money	308
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.	Truth	309
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.		310
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.	Truth	311
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.		312
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.		313
Pictures must not be too picturesque.	Art	314
Revolutions go not backward.		315
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.	God	316
Nothing external to you has any power over you.	Power	317
What you are comes to you.		318
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.		319
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.	Age, Best, Women	320
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.	Great, Men	321
Power and speed be hands and feet.	Power	322
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.		323
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.	Truth	324
A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.		325
We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.		326
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.		401
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.		402
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.		403
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.	Great, Power, Wisdom	404
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.	Death, Positive	405
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.	Alone, Beauty, History	406
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.		407
The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.	Nature	408
Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.	Nature	409
It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.		410
We are always getting ready to live but never living.		411
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.	Mom	412
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.	Friendship	413
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.	Nature, Patience, Wisdom	414
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.	Morning	415
A man is what he thinks about all day long.		416
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.		417
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.		418
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.	Freedom	419
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.	Money	420
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.	Death	421
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.		422
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.	Truth	423
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.		424
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.	Science	425
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.	Great, Trust	426
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.	Knowledge	501
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.		502
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.	Intelligence	503
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.		504
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.	Truth	505
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.		506
We are wiser than we know.	Wisdom	507
All diseases run into one, old age.	Age	508
Our best thoughts come from others.	Best	509
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.	Art	510
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.		511
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.	Learning	512
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.		513
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.		514
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.		515
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.		516
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.		517
A man in debt is so far a slave.	Money	518
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.		519
God screens us evermore from premature ideas.		520
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.	Nature	521
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.		522
To be great is to be misunderstood.	Great	523
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.	Nature	524
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.	Nature	525
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.	Peace, War	526
Every wall is a door.		601
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.		602
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.		603
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.		604
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.		605
There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.		606
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.	Dreams	607
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.	Peace	608
Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.		609
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.		610
Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.		611
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.	Friendship	612
Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.		613
Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.		614
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.	Health	615
I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.		616
Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.		617
The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.		618
If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.		619
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.	Beauty	620
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.	Space	621
America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.	Imagination	622
The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.		623
Without electricity, the air would rot.		624
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'		625
As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.		626
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.		701
The years teach much which the days never know.	Experience	702
All mankind love a lover.	Love	703
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.	Dreams	704
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.	Intelligence	705
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.	Fear, Learning	706
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.		707
Good men must not obey the laws too well.		708
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.	Wisdom	709
Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.	Wisdom	710
We acquire the strength we have overcome.	Strength	711
We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.		712
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.		713
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.		714
There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.		715
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?		716
We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.		717
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.	Courage	718
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.		719
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.		720
People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.		721
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.		722
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.	Beauty, Happiness	723
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.		724
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.		725
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.		726
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.		801
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.	Beauty	802
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.		803
Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.	Good	804
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.	Learning	805
As soon as there is life there is danger.		806
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.		807
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'		808
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.		809
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.		810
Genius always finds itself a century too early.	Intelligence	811
Nature hates calculators.		812
America is another name for opportunity.		813
Every hero becomes a bore at last.		814
The ancestor of every action is a thought.		815
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.		816
Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.		817
Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.	Science	818
A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.		819
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.		820
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.		821
The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.		822
It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.		823
The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.		824
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.		825
I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.		826
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.	Faith	901
In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.		902
Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.		903
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.	Good	904
Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.		905
Make yourself necessary to somebody.		906
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.		907
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.		908
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.	Beauty	909
A great man is always willing to be little.		910
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.	Life	911
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.		912
Reality is a sliding door.		913
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.	Courage	914
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.		915
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.	Society	916
There is always safety in valor.		917
Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.		918
There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.		919
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.	Faith	920
Life is our dictionary.		921
We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.		922
I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.		923
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.		924
Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.		925
Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.		926
Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.		1001
What is a farm but a mute gospel?		1002
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.		1003
Every burned book enlightens the world.		1004
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.		1005
The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.	Wisdom	1006
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.	Freedom	1007
People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.		1008
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.		1009
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.		1010
If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.		1011
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.		1012
Children are all foreigners.		1013
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.		1014
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?		1015
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.		1016
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.		1017
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.		1018
It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.		1019
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.		1020
There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.	Chance	1021
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.		1022
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.		1023
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.		1024
Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.		1025
We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.		1026
Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.		1101
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.		1102
O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.		1103
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.		1104
Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.		1105
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.		1106
In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.		1107
The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.		1108
Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.		1109
Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.		1110
Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.		1111

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