- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

Begin and proceed on a settled conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.

Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.

Overhead the sanctities of the stars shine forever-more... pouring satire on the pompous business of the day which they close, and making the generations of men show slight and evanescent.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes.

Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

No society can ever be so large as one man.

If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.

Consistency is the bugbear that frightens little minds.

General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.

Life loiters at the book's first page,-- Ah! could we turn the leaf.

I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.

Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.

Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will.

The eye is the best of artists.

Art, in the artist, is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan.

In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

We know that madness belongs to love,--what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven.

Our prayers are prophets.

Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement.

The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.

There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.

Man is the dwarf of himself.

For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring orrather terminating my own soul.

Our reliance on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves.

The moral sense is always supported by the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I know not how, in our world, any good would ever get done.

All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.

If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.

How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew.

Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath.

Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.

The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

Conversation is an evanescent relation,--no more.

In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.

He only is rich who owns the day.

Let us learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit of dominion over the palate has certain good effects not easily estimated.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.

We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion.

The maxim of courts is that manner is power.

Do what you're afraid to do.

Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.