Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

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

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

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

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

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

"Men are what their mothers made them."

"Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know."

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

"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."

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

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"Good men must not obey the laws too well."

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

"A good indignation brings out all one's powers."

"The years teach much which the days never know."

"Wisdom principle 85 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 26."

"Wisdom principle 75 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 20."

"Wisdom principle 55 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 8."

"Wisdom principle 45 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 2."

"Wisdom principle 39 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 99."

"Wisdom principle 19 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 87."

"Wisdom principle 4 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 78."

"A mindful spirit recognizes that the pursuit of truth is a lifelong endeavor."

"It is a subtle truth that true innovation is born when curiosity dares to question long-settled assumptions — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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

"As soon as there is life there is danger."

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

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

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

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."

"A great man is always willing to be little."

"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."

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

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

"Wisdom principle added 14 tells us that life is lesson 14."

"Wisdom principle added 13 tells us that life is lesson 13."

"Wisdom principle added 12 tells us that life is lesson 12."

"Wisdom principle 105 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 38."

"Wisdom principle 80 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 23."

"Wisdom principle 70 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 17."

"Wisdom principle 60 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 11."

"Wisdom principle 34 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 96."

"Wisdom principle 24 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 90."

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

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

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

"Wisdom principle 100 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 35."

"Wisdom principle 95 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 32."

"Wisdom principle 90 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 29."

"Wisdom principle 65 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 14."

"Wisdom principle 50 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 5."

"Wisdom principle 29 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 93."

"Wisdom principle 14 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 84."

"Wisdom principle 9 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 81."

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

"No man ever prayed heartily without learning something."

"Great geniuses have the shortest biographies."

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

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

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

"Our best thoughts come from others."

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

"All diseases run into one, old age."

"The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?"

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

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

"Nature hates calculators."

"Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."

"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit."

"Earth laughs in flowers."

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."

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

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

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

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

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

"A visionary sees the unseen and knows the most profound truths are found in silence."

"It is a radiant truth that when you master your attention, you master your entire perception of reality — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"We acquire the strength we have overcome."

"We gain the strength of the temptation we resist."

"Power and speed be hands and feet."

"Nothing external to you has any power over you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies."

"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."

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

"Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait."

"Beauty without expression is boring."

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

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

"Every artist was first an amateur."

"Beauty in art is the harmony of spirit, intellect, and craft. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The first wealth is health."

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

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

"The faith that stands on authority is not faith."

"Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual."

"All mankind love a lover."

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

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

"The pursuit of excellence requires knowing that a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles."

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

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

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

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

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

"God screens us evermore from premature ideas."

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

"The highest revelation is that God is in every man."

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

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

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

"Science does not know its debt to imagination."

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

"No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character."

"As we grow old, the beauty steals inward."

"It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself."

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

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

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

"God enters by a private door into every individual."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"Money often costs too much."

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

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

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

"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."

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."

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

"Genius always finds itself a century too early."

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

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

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

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

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

"A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace."