- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him.

All vigor is contagious.

The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.

Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.

Knowledge is the antidote to fear. [especially as fear often stands for false evidence appearing real!]

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning, excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death.

Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.

Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.

A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.

It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.

The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious; from thesleep of passions to their rage.

Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised.

England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them.

We live ruins amid ruins.

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

Every thought is public, Every nook is wide; Thy gossips spread each whisper, And the gods from side to side.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.

When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.

In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown.

Every thing admonishes us how needlessly long life is.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.

The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.

Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

When a natural king becomes a titular king, every body is pleased and satisfied.

History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do.

Life has a way of demanding that you live it.

A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.

The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.

What you set your heart upon, surely shall be yours.

It really is considered one of the blessings of previous mates which you could manage being silly with them.

Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character.

The amount of a man's wealth consists in the number of things he can do without.

Make youself necessary to someone.

Under every deep a lower deep opens.

First be a good animal.

Not the sun or summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight.

God will not make himself manifest to cowards

There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Thought makes everything fit for use.