- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.

Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

It is not the irregular hours or irregular diet that makes the romantic life.

Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished-by fear...be honest with a man and you have no fear. Try to deceive and the relationship deteriorates.

Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.

Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology.

Our best history is still poetry.

A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Character is an invincible force, which acts by presence and without means

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.

Let us be poised, wise and our own today.

Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.

The language of the street is always strong.

Power dwells with cheerfulness.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

I admire answers to which no answers can be made.

Life too near paralyses art.

People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.

If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.

Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book.

We expect a great man to be a good reader.

In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.

What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'

The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon.

The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but Intelligence.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it.

We are all wise for other people, none for himself.

Words are finite expressions of the infinite mind.

Women have a less accurate measure of time than men; there is a clock in Adam, none in Eve.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.[What is a sorrow? A feeling whose benefits have not yet been discovered]

[Gratitude is] the cheerfulness of wisdom.

But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes.

Look out! Behind you!