Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Lose yourself in nature and find peace

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.

Noblesse oblige; or, superior advantages bind you to larger generosity.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Be not the slave of your own past.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation.

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.

If you don't ride in the rain, you don't ride.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.

Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams if you don't follow through.

The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

One idea lights a thousand candles.

Do not follow where the path may lead.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

Enthusiasm is the engine of success.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical.

We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Live well, learn plenty, laugh often, love much.

What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.