- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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

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

I am become a transparent eyeball.

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

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.

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

Concentration is the secret of srength.

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

America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.

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.

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

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

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

The finest wits have their sediment.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

Spoons and skimmers you can be undistinguishably together; but vases and statues require each a pedestal for itself.

Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.

All science is transcendental or else passes away.

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also.

Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere as to expect poetry from this engineer or a chemical discovery from that jobber.

I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun.

Love is like a hunter, who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness. Love is strongest in pursuit; friendship in possession.

The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.

On bravely through the sunshine and the showers! Time hath his work to do, and we have ours.

Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped.

The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment.

Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn; nature's oldest force is as good as new.

Faith makes us, and not we it; and faith makes its own forms.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .

They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.

He who would be a great soul in the future, must be a great soul now.

Wisdom is infused into every form.

If you have something to say, you will be given the power to say it.

Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise beforea man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison.

What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.

Treat your friend as a spectacle.

'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the best economist.

The Oversoul is before Time, and Time, Father of all else, is one of his children.

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.

There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.

The victories of character are instant, and victories for all.

An individual has a healthy personality to the exact degree to which they have the propensity to look for the good in every situation.