- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation.

America means opportunity, freedom, power.

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

As gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.

Activity is contagious.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it... ''Beware of me,'' it says, ''but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

The house is a castle which the King cannot enter.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.

The secret is the answer to all that has been, all that is, and all that will ever be.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,-must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.

The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

A man is related to all nature.

That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

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?

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins

We have more than we use.

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

What we call results are beginnings.

The eye is the painter and the ear the singer.

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.

Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

Speak the affirmative; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

For the resolute and determined, there is time and opportunity.