- Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed.

As picture teaches the colouring, so sculpture the anatomy of form.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

Friends are like spaghetti, they should stick together. The only way to have a friend is to be one.

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

When I bought my farm, I did not know what a bargain I had in the bluebirds, daffodils and thrushes; as little did I know what sublime mornings and sunsets I was buying.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature.

Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

It is better to suffer injustice than to do it.

Let him be great, and love shall follow him.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.

You cannot see the mountain near.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Men are what their mothers made them.

A man is known by the books he reads.

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

What you are comes to you.

Meet your failure nobly, and it will not differ from success.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

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

Sitting back in the evening, stargazing and stroking your dog, is an infallible remedy.

Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.

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

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow

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

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Let the bird sing without deciphering the song.