- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The way to learn German, is, to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart.

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable.

It's a luxury to be understood.

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

When we can't piece together the puzzle of our own lives, remember the best view of a puzzle is from above. Let Him help put you together.

Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends her all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.

Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God.

Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.

A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.

The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus.

In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.

The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

There is no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth.

Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

When the gods come among men, they are not known.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

Who makes and keeps the Jew or the Negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy?

Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom.

Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.

The advantage in education is always with those children who slip up into life without being objects of notice.

To be great, you must be misunderstood

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

Adult males are what their moms designed them.

Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.

Intemperance is the only vulgarity.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

You think me the child of circumstance; I make my circumstance.

The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo.

Marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object.

But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politics ....?

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

The power of a man increases steadily by continuing in one direction.

If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.

I think the vice of our housekeeping is that it does not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of education, the viceof religion, is one with that of the private life.