Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises,...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunde...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imitation cannot go above its model.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

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

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equa...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are immensed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs, "The Gods are to each other not unknown." Friends also follow the laws of divine nece...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power to swe...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which h...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author Bio

  • NameRalph Waldo Emerson
  • DescriptionAmerican philosopher, essayist, and poet
  • BornMay 25, 1803
  • DiedApril 27, 1882
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Poet; Writer; Essayist