- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Every word was once a poem.

Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

No man can have society upon his own terms.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

The proof of a high education is the ability to speak about complex matters as simply as possible.

Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

Words are alive. Cut them and they bleed.

The force of character is cumulative.

In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.

What you persist in doing gets easier. The task hasn't changed, but your ability to do it has increased.

The cardinal virtue of a teacher [is] to protect the pupil from his own influence.

Liberty is a slow fruit.

The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.

Real men don't conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.

People say law but they mean wealth.

If you would lift me up, you've got to be on higher ground.

Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them

The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness.

The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation; when memory came, it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.

Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.

Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.

No man can help another without helping himself.

We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.

In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present.

A man often pays dear for a small frugality.

Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

A friend is the hope of the heart.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Every natural action is graceful.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?

The music that can deepest reach and cure all ill is cordial speech.

Perpetual modernism is the measure of merit in every work of art.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid.

Neither is life long enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic affair.

The unsaid part is the best of every discourse.