Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought makes every thing fit for use.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

To think is to act.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's what he thinks about all day long

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The surest poison is time.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable -- any real insight or broad human sentiment.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Travel is a fools paradise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is --Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-trust is the essence of heroism.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always safety in valor.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The virtue in most request is conformity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our strength grows out of our weakness.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first wealth is health.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The education of the will is the object of our existence.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a festival only to the wise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work is victory.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau [Henry Thoreaus aunt]Henry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dont say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson