Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Learn from it... tomorrow is a new day.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work , but the solidest thing we know.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

All life is an experiment.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Our strength grows out of our weakness.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

Love not the flower they pluck and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.

Every wall is a door.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

We don't grow old. When we cease to grow, we become old.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

Love, and you shall be loved.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.

The First wealth is health.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us.

Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.