Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
American essayist and central voice of Transcendentalism. His essays — Self-Reliance, Nature — call the individual back to direct experience and inner authority.
53 passages across 20 themes. More on Ralph Waldo Emerson.
On authenticity
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
“I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.”
“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”
“Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.”
“Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.”
“The cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best That all the wine at once we swallow And lees make all the rest.”
“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”
“No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too.”
“We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
“Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.”
“Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock.”
“The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.”
“You can take better care of your secret than another can.”
“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.”
On action
“We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.”
“There is a freemasonry among the dull by which they recognize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent tact in men of genius.”
“He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.”
“How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.”
“People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.”
“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
“It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.”
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”
“Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.”
On mind
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
“All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.”
“We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.”
“Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”
On time
“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”
“Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”
“Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”
On love
“Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.”
“There are two classes of poets — the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.”
“Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.”
On freedom
“I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.”
“The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.”
On death
“Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”
“The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.”
On truth
“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.”
“The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.”
On reflection
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
On patience
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
On purpose
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
On faith
“Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.”
On character
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.”
On listening
“When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.”
On presence
“The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.”
On joy
“You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.”
On suffering
“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
On hope
“But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”
On genius
“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.”
On wisdom
“Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.”