Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Born
May 25, 1803, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

Died
April 27, 1882.

Occupation
Poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.

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

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
– 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

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We are wiser than we know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

God enters by a private door into every individual.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best thoughts come from others.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first wealth is health.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Science does not know its debt to imagination.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All diseases run into one, old age.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are what their mothers made them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hitch your wagon to a star.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson