Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Ralph Waldo Emerson Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: May 25, 1803
  • Died: Apr 27, 1882

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and 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, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

All mankind love a lover.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Every artist was first an amateur.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

Our best thoughts come from others.

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

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

All diseases run into one, old age.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

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

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

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The first wealth is health.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Nature hates calculators.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

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

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Earth laughs in flowers.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.

The years teach much which the days never know.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Men are what their mothers made them.

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

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

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

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Money often costs too much.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening, only with his legs.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

A great man is always willing to be little.

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

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.