- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

To a physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ.

Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

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

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

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.

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

'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.

Treat your friend as a spectacle.

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

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.

The world we live in is but thickened light.

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.

America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.

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

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.

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.

The only true gifts are a portion of yourself.

Fear is cruel and mean.

Conversation is a game of circles.

Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.

A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it.

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us

Nature encourages no looseness; pardons no errors.

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.

Knowledge is the antidote to fear

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.

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

I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.

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

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

The less government we have the better.

The secret of the world is the tie between person and event. Person makes event and event person.

I think no virtue goes with size;The reason of all cowardiceIs, that men are overgrown,And, to be valiant, must come downTo the titmouse dimension.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

There is health in table talk and nursery play. We must wear old shoes and have aunts and cousins.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.

Every time you wink the stars move.