Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

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

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Money often costs too much.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

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

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

The years teach much which the days never know.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'

All mankind love a lover.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

The earth laughs in flowers.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

A great man is always willing to be little.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

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

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

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

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

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

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

Every artist was first an amateur.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

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 think.

We are wiser than we know.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Beauty without expression is boring.

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

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

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

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

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

Power and speed be hands and feet.