Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always a best way of doing everything.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more experiments you make the better.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eye is easily frightened.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever limits us we call fate.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear always springs from ignorance.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth laughs in flowers.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only prudence in life is concentration.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Accept your genius and say what you think.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman -- repose in energy.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dice of God are always loaded.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a crack in everything God has made.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less government we have the better.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

To fill the hour -- that is happiness.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness -- an open and noble temper.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson