- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.

We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.

When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.

We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall; Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?

It is about your outlook towards life. You can either regret or rejoice.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says anywhere but here.

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

Fate is unpenetrated causes.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

Cunning is strength withheld.

There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

The greatest discoveries are those that shed light unto ourselves.

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

Life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.

The primary wisdom is intuition.

If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.

The world exists for the education of each man.

There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.

There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

The house praises the carpenter.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

In good writing, words become one with things.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

Each moment of the year has its own beauty.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.

All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, trebleor centuple use and meaning.

Reality is a sliding door.

Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.