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 reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do the thing and you will have the power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.

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

Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Books are for nothing but to inspire

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature.... It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use.

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