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.

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

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

Every artist was first an amateur.

Money often costs too much.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

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

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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

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

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

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

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

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

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

A great man is always willing to be little.

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

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.

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

The years teach much which the days never know.

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

All mankind love a lover.

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

All diseases run into one, old age.

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

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

Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

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

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

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

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.

Earth laughs in flowers.

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

Power and speed be hands and feet.

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

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

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

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

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

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

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

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

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

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

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

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

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

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

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

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

The first wealth is health.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

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

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

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

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

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

Nature hates calculators.

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

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

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

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

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

Beauty without expression is boring.

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

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

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

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

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

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

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

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

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

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

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Our best thoughts come from others.

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

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

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

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.