Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

When a man becomes a conformist, he is sacrificing the richness of independent thinking.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

Research is not seeing what others do not see, it is seeing the same thing as other people and thinking what they do not.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

It takes a good deal of character to judge a person by his future instead of his past

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

The world belongs to the energetic.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest. Always do what you are afraid to do.

Neither you nor the world knows what you can do until you have tried.

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty.

Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.

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.

A great man is always willing to be little.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself is to quote one.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

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

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

Nature hates calculators.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Insist upon yourself. Be original.

Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.

In the woods we return to reason and faith.

The shot heard round the world.

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

I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies.

Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.