- 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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The borrower runs in his own debt.

Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

The great majority of men grow up and grow old in seeming and following.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.

It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or

There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

Civilization depends on morality.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.

Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.

If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

In America and Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity.

Where there is no vision a people perish.

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

Wise men read very sharply all of your private history in your look and gait and behavior.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.

We walk alone in the world.

The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.

Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.