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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes



Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson - (198 quotes)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Accomplishment category:

When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Activity category:

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Activity category:

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Advice category:

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Aging category:

As we grow old... the beauty steals inward. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Ambition category:

Hitch your wagon to a star. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Ambition category:

The high prize of life, the crowning glory of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness – whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords or canals, or statues, or songs. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Ambition category:

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Art category:

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Art category:

Art is the path of the creator to his work. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Art category:

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. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Artists category:

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Artists category:

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Beauty category:

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Beauty category:

Each moment of the year has its own beauty... a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Beauty category:

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Beginning category:

Every artist was first an amateur. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Beginning category:

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Books category:

Some books leave us free and some books make us free. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Books category:

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. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Character category:

Character is higher than intellect. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Character category:

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Children category:

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Choices category:

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please – you can never have both. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Collaboration category:

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. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Communication category:

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Complaining category:

Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Comprehension category:

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Concentration category:

Concentration is the secret of strength. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Confidence category:

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Consideration category:

We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Construction category:

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Courage category:

A great part of courage is having done the thing before. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Creativity category:

In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim... The details, the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Creativity category:

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Criticism category:

The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Criticism category:

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Criticism category:

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Criticism category:

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Danger category:

As soon as there is life, there is danger. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Danger category:

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Danger category:

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Desire category:

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Destiny category:

The efforts we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Destiny category:

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Determination category:

The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Difficulty category:

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Difficulty category:

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Discovery category:

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Discovery category:

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Dissatisfaction category:

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, ''Anywhere but here.'' (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Drawing category:

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely... but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Dreams category:

Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Earth category:

Earth laughs in flowers. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Editing category:

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Education category:

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Effort category:

We aim above the mark to hit the mark. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Effort category:

Every calling is great when greatly pursued. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Emotion category:

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Emotion category:

What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's response is always right. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Energy category:

The world belongs to the energetic. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Enthusiasm category:

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Enthusiasm category:

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Enthusiasm category:

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Exhaustion category:

An artist spends himself like the crayon in his hand, till he is all gone. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Expectation category:

No one expects the days to be gods. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Expectation category:

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Experience category:

The years teach much which the days never knew. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Experiments category:

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Failure category:

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it - so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Fame category:

Fame is proof that people are gullible. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Fear category:

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Fear category:

The two terrors that discourage originality and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Friendship category:

The only way to have a friend is to be one. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Friendship category:

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Gender category:

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Generosity category:

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Genius category:

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Genius category:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Goals category:

I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Goodness category:

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Grace category:

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Greatness category:

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Greatness category:

To be great is to be misunderstood. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Growth category:

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Growth category:

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Habit category:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Happiness category:

For every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Health category:

Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Health category:

I honor health as the first Muse. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Humanity category:

A man must be in sympathy with society around him, or else, not wish to be in sympathy with it. If neither of these two, he must be wretched. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Humility category:

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Hypocrisy category:

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Illusion category:

We do not like those who unmask our illusions. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Imitation category:

Insist on yourself; never imitate. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Imitation category:

Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Importance category:

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Importance category:

Let not the author eat up the man, so that he shall be all balcony and no house. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Importance category:

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Incentive category:

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Individuality category:

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individualism of his rowing. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Insecurity category:

Every man wants to be settled, but only insofar as he is unsettled is there hope. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Inspiration category:

What is indispensable to inspiration? ...sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Inspiration category:

There is a great deal of poetry and sentiment in a chest of tea. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Inspiration category:

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Instinct category:

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Integrity category:

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Invention category:

Invention breeds invention. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Invention category:

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Journey category:

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Joy category:

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Language category:

Language is fossil poetry. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Language category:

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Life category:

Life is a festival only to the wise. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Life category:

Life is 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, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Life category:

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Love category:

All mankind loves a lover. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Masters category:

The artist always has the masters in his eye. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Masters category:

What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Methodology category:

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Miracles category:

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Mistakes category:

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)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Mistakes category:

There is a tendency for things to right themselves. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Modernism category:

Perpetual moderness is the measure of merit in every work of art. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Modernism category:

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Muse category:

The delicate muses lose their head if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your bookshelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Music category:

Music causes us to think eloquently. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Nature category:

The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Opportunity category:

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Optimism category:

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Originality category:

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Painting category:

The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Passion category:

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Peace category:

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Perfection category:

Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Performance category:

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Perseverance category:

What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Persistence category:

That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Persistence category:

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Plagiarism category:

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Play category:

It is a happy talent to know how to play. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Politics category:

Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Portraiture category:

A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Possibilities category:

There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Power category:

There is no knowledge that is not power. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Power category:

Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Preparation category:

Sufficient to today are the duties of today. Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you; well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Profession category:

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Prosperity category:

Money often costs too much. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Prosperity category:

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Questions category:

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. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Quotations category:

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Recognition category:

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Religion category:

The religions we call false were once true. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Religion category:

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Religion category:

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Renewal category:

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Repetition category:

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Rewards category:

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Rules category:

Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Sacrifice category:

Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Sculpture category:

As picture teaches the colouring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Sculpture category:

The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Seeing category:

People only see what they are prepared to see. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Seeing category:

Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me - I am part or parcel of God. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Silence category:

Real action is in silent moments. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Silence category:

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Simplicity category:

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Simplicity category:

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Skill category:

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Solitude category:

It is better to be alone than in bad company. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Strength category:

Man cannot be happy and strong until he lives with nature in the present, above time. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Style category:

A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Success category:

Self-trust is the first secret to success. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Success category:

- attributed...
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)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Teaching category:

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Thought category:

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Thought category:

Our best thoughts come from others. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Thought category:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within... Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Time category:

Adopt the pace of nature. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Time category:

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Time category:

So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Tradition category:

New arts destroy the old. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Travel category:

Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Trust category:

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Trust category:

Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Truth category:

The greatest homage to truth is to use it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Truth category:

Do your thing and I shall know you. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Truth category:

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Understanding category:

It is a luxury to be understood. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Universe category:

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Universe category:

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Wisdom category:

The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Wisdom category:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Words category:

Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Work category:

There is no way to success in our art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Worry category:

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson - From the Writing category:

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)