- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done.

We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.

The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious.

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together.

Every natural power exhilarates; a true talent delights the possessor first.

What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.

The end of being is to know; and if you say, the end of knowledge is action,-why, yes, but the end of that action again, is knowledge.

What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of.

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.

You've got to be taught, to hate and fear, You've got to be taught, from year to year, It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, You've got to be carefully taught.

Ability without honor has no value.

Women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour.

Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.

A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg , and his whole body to irresistible destruction.

A man should carry nature in his head.

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.

Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its unmaskers.

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.

We are imprisoned in life in the company of persons powerfully unlike us.

Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.

Nature turns all malfaisance to good.

Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws.

The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after.

The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.

The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.

Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.

The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.

For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.

Line in Nature is not found; Unit and Universe are round.

Why should we not have a first-hand and immediate experience of God?

For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.

Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold it's great proportions.

The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody.

We are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know is a point to what we do not know."

[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.

Beauty brings its own fancy price, for all that a man hath will he give for his love.

Friendship buys friendship.

Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.

Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimneyside of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front.