Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
A man is what he thinks of all day long.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
All life is an experiment.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
As we grow old…the beauty steals inward.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Children are all foreigners.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Conversation enriches the understanding;
but solitude is the school of genius.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Do not go where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.
Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Finish each day before you begin the next,
and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely and with
too high a spirit to be cumbered
with your old nonsense.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Great men are they who see that spiritual
is stronger than any material force,
that thoughts rule the world.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
He is great who is what he is from Nature,
and who never reminds us of others.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
He who has a thousand friends
Has not a friend to spare,
While he who has one enemy
Shall meet him everywhere.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Heroism feels and never reasons
and is therefore always right.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
I have heard with admiring submission
the experience of the lady who declared
that the sense of being perfectly well dressed
gives a feeling of inward tranquility
which religion is powerless to bestow.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
I pay the schoolmaster,
but it is the school boys who educate my son.
The secret in education lies in respecting the student.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts,
and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
If we live truly, we shall see truly.
It is as easy for the strong man to be strong,
as it is for the weak to be weak.
When we have new perception,
we shall gladly disburden the memory
of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish.
When a man lives with God,
his voice shall be as sweet as
the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Imitation is suicide.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Insist on yourself; never imitate.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
It is the office of a true teacher
to show us that God is, not was;
that He speaketh, not spake.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Let us treat men and women well;
treat them as if they were real.
Perhaps they are.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Life is not so short
but that there is always time for courtesy.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares,
when working to another aim.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Men talk as if victory were something fortunate.
Work is victory.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Music causes us to think eloquently.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
My chief want in life is someone
who shall make me do what I can.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Nature arms each man with some faculty
which enables him to do easily some feat
impossible to any other.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Nature is the art of God.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Never lose an opportunity
to see anything that is beautiful.
It is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face,
every fair sky, every fair flower.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
None of us will every accomplish anything excellent
or commanding except when he listens to this whisper
which is heard by him alone.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Nothing can bring you peace
but the triumph of principles.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
One definition of man is "an intelligence served by organs."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Our faith comes in moments,
yet there is a depth in those brief moments
which constrains us to ascribe more reality
to them than to all other experiences.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Peace has its victories,
but it takes brave men and women to win them.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
People seem not to see that
their opinion of the world is also
a confession of character.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Once you make a decision,
the universe conspires to make it happen.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The earth laughs in flowers.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The glory of friendship
is not the outstretched hand,
nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship;
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one
when he discovers that someone else believes in him
and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues,
the better we like him.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
A man's what he thinks about all day long
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.
Thought makes every thing fit for use.
What your heart thinks is great, is great.
The soul's emphasis is always right.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The only reward of virtue is virtue;
the only way to have a friend is to be one.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The true preacher can be known by this,
that he deals out to the people his life,
-- life passed through the fire of thought.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
The years teach much which the days never knew.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
There are always difficulties arising
that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
~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~
Thought is the blossom; language the bud;
action the fruit behind.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Tis the good reader that makes the good book;
in every book he finds passages
which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else
and unmistakably meant for his ear;
the profit of books is according to
the sensibility of the reader;
the profoundest thought or passion
sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered
by an equal mind and heart.
~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 a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
To live without duties is obscene.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end
requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
To think is to act.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
We are students of words:
we are shut up in a schools and colleges
and recitation-rooms for ten or fifteen years,
and come out at last with a bag of wind,
a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
Men grind and grind in the mill of truism,
and nothing comes out but what was put in.
But the moment they desert the tradition
for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope,
virtue, learning, anecdote, all flower to them all.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
We boil at different degrees.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
What a new face courage puts on everything.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
What lies beyond us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
What you do speaks so loud
that I cannot hear what you say.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
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.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
song playing....Sweet Dreams