- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I quote another man's saying; unluckily, that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me.

When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.

Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.

Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code.

A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation.

The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.

In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof?

All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man.

A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves.

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.

The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite.

The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to fix the parallax of any other star

Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.

The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. Strength enters just as much as the moral element prevails.

Free should be the scholar - free and brave.

The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Success to the strongest, who are always, at last, the wisest and best.

It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on memory alone.

History - a biography of a few stout and earnest persons

A true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.

Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs.

A great teacher makes hard things easy.

Every man is the inlet and may become the outlet of all there is in God.

The soul is the perceiver and the revealer of truth.

I suppose you could never explain to the most ingenous molusk that such a creature as a whale existed.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Football is four 15-minute quarters. Plus timeouts and commercials.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect.

It is better to be a thorn in the side of a friend than an echo.

Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character.

Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.

We pass for what we are.

There are books... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.

The student is to read history actively and not passively.

I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.

Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.

I unsettle all things.

Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs; The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays.

Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast, In hamlets, palaces, and parks, And told the truant by his marks,- Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.

it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.