Emerson has share with the world some pretty great insights into life during his time. The following are a few Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on a variety of topics. Some are inspiring while others simply speak the truth. Although he died over a century ago, many of his words still hold true in today’s world, even with all of the changes that have taken place over the past 100 years.
“Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.”
“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”
“It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”
“It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.”
“It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.'”
“Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.”
“As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.”
“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.”
“As soon as there is life there is danger.”
“Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”
“Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.”
“Earth laughs in flowers.”
“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”
“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”
“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
“A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.”
“A great man is always willing to be little.”
“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”
“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”
“We must be our own before we can be another’s.”
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
“All mankind love a lover.”
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
“Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world.”
“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
“For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. ”
“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.”
“Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.”
“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.”
“A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes. ”
“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.”
“A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.”
“All life is an experiment.”
“America is another name for opportunity.”
“The years teach much which the days never knew.”
“There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.”
“There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.”
“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.”
“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self? ”
“Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.”
“We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.”
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
“Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.”
“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”
“Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.”
“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“Why need I volumes, if one word suffice? ”
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
“All diseases run into one, old age.”
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.”
“Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.”
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
“The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.”
“The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.”
“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”
“Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.”
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
“As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.”
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. ”
“A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. ”
“Be an opener of doors.”
“Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized”.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.”
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
“When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”
“When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.”
“But genius is the power to labor better and more available. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.”
“Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.”
“Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.”
“A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”
“A man in debt is so far a slave.”
“A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.”
“Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.”
“God enters by a private door into every individual.”
“God screens us evermore from premature ideas.”
“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
“Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.”
“Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.”
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
“If in the least particular one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?”
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”
“If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.”
“If we tire of the saints, Shakespeare is our city of refuge.”
“Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.”
“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”
“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. ”
“Make yourself necessary to somebody.”
“Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.”
“Our best thoughts come from others.”
“Our chief is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”
“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.”
“The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.”
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.”
“The faith that stands on authority is not faith.”
“The first wealth is health.”
“The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.”
“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.”
“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
