- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

Desire is possibility seeking expression.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.

The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

It is in rugged crises, in unbearable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of the question, that the angel is shown.

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

The man (or woman) who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.

There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.

A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

An empire is an immense egotism.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

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

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

All great men come out of the middle classes.

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.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.