“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The law of nature is, do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“It was for beauty that the world was made.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The years teach much which the days never know.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Hitch your wagon to a star.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Good criticism is very rare, and always precious.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price—and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price—is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its law, and conduct you to a higher degree of power. You must obey your heart.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Life is our dictionary.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“He who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and would embrace at last the universal sphere.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If you see smoke, there must be fire.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The only sin is limitation.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“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 Primary source“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Happy is the house that shelters a friend!”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Love the day.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills of income, though never so small, being added, wealth begins.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The first wealth is health.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Grief too will make us idealists.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“It is better to be alone than in bad company.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every thing impossible, until we see a success.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Character is higher than intellect.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“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 eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Practice is nine tenths.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life: nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“A little integrity is better than any career.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“But genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create—to create—is the proof of a divine presence.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“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 Primary source“The law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual effort of Nature to attain it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. 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 Primary source“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We must be our own [friend] before we can be another’s.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Beauty is the quality which makes to endure.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“In all design, art lies in making your object prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing objects that are prominent.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. This is our permanent state.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made a toy.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, and all good books, in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable—any real insight or broad human sentiment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Best use of money is to pay debts.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Our spontaneous action is always the best.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go there without renewing the conviction that the best of it all is already within the four walls of my study at home.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“It is commonly observed, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, come rapid claims: which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“What is the hardest task in the world? To think.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring quality and the most ascending quality.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If a man owns land, the land owns him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“All successful men have agreed in one thing—they were causationists.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The right investment is in tools of your trade.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are: 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“In comparing the number of good books with the shortness of life, many might well be read by proxy, if we had good proxies.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There is no knowledge that is not power”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“All our science lacks a human side.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“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. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“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 Disputed“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Life is a journey, not a destination.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the masterworks and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“True conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary sourceHenry David Thoreau William Blake Gerald Heard Arnold J. Toynbee Franklin D. Roosevelt