- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

All mankind love a lover.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Character is that which can do without success.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

Skill to do comes of doing.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

Difficulties exist to be surmounted.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate.

There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.

Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours.

A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray.

America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.

Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force.

Concentration is the secret of srength.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design,--he will presently undervalue the actual object.

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.

I am become a transparent eyeball.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm.

There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

What torments of grief you endured, from evils that never arrived

The only true gifts are a portion of yourself.

Fear is cruel and mean.

Conversation is a game of circles.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Find the journey's end in every step.

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew In the belly of the grape

Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

Conformity is the ape of harmony.

The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.

The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.