Quotes by
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
1803-1884 , American philosopher
American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
| 83 quotes | 4,042 visits |
Quotations
| • | To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. 15 |
| • | The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going. 11 |
| • | Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up. 10 |
| • | Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. 10 |
| • | The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. 9 |
| • | In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. 8 |
| • | People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. 8 |
| • | The only way to have a friend is to be one. 8 |
| • | All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. 8 |
| • | Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce? 7 |
| • | The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. 7 |
| • | A man is a god in ruins. 7 |
| • | To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. 7 |
| • | Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine. 7 |
| • | Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend. 6 |
| • | Whatever limits us we call Fate. 6 |
| • | Men are what their mothers made them. 6 |
| • | The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. 6 |
| • | The ancestor of every action is a thought. 6 |
| • | A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. 6 |
| • | It is not the length of life, but the depth. 6 |
| • | Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 6 |
| • | What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. 6 |
| • | Be silly. Be honest. Be kind. 5 |
| • | The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. 5 |
| • | That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us. 5 |
| • | It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. 5 |
| • | We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions. 5 |
| • | Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head? 5 |
| • | Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. 5 |
| • | Be good to your work, your word, and your friend. 5 |
| • | All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. 5 |
| • | The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. 5 |
| • | When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. 5 |
| • | Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. 4 |
| • | Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. 4 |
| • | Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time. 4 |
| • | Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. 4 |
| • | Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. 4 |
| • | Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in cause and effect. 4 |
| • | Art is a jealous mistress. 4 |
| • | The only gift is a portion of thyself. 4 |
| • | Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one. 4 |
| • | Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great. 4 |
| • | Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. 4 |
| • | Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock. 4 |
| • | Self-trust is the first secret of success. 4 |
| • | We don’t grow old. When we cease to grow, we become old. 4 |
| • | Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. 4 |
| • | The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. 4 |
| • | Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet. 4 |
| • | The years in your life are less important than the life in your years. 4 |
| • | The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. 4 |
| • | In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him. 4 |
| • | The earth laughs in flowers. 4 |
| • | What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. 4 |
| • | A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveler in a very far country. 3 |
| • | Things refuse to be mismanaged long. 3 |
| • | To live without duties is obscene. 3 |
| • | There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. 3 |
| • | By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. 3 |
| • | Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. 3 |
| • | Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody. 3 |
| • | Music is the poor man's Parnassus. 3 |
| • | The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. 3 |
| • | Hitch your wagon to a star. 3 |
| • | Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. 3 |
| • | 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. 3 |
| • | We boil at different degrees. 3 |
| • | If a man own land, the land owns him. 3 |
| • | All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. 3 |
| • | Every hero becomes a bore at last. 3 |
| • | We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can. 3 |
| • | There is properly no history; only biography. 3 |
| • | As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey. 3 |
| • | Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams. 3 |
| • | Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. 3 |
| • | I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. 3 |
| • | It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself. 3 |
| • | Every artist was first an amateur. 3 |
| • | Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. 3 |
| • | If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. 3 |
| • | Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. 3 |