Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes And Sayings

Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as 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 wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit.

Fiction Reveals Truth That Reality Obscures.

The Fox Has Many Tricks. The Hedgehog Has But One. But That Is The Best Of All.

Never Lose An Opportunity Of Seeing Anything Beautiful, For Beauty Is God's Handwriting.

Unless You Try To Do Something Beyond What You Have Already Mastered, You Will Never Grow.

Bad Times Have A Scientific Value. These Are Occasions A Good Learner Would Not Miss.

Common Sense Is Genius Dressed In Its Working Clothes.

Knowledge Is Knowing That We Cannot Know.

Every Actual State Is Corrupt. Good Men Must Not Obey Laws Too Well.

Trust Men And They Will Be True To You; Treat Them Greatly And They Will Show Themselves Great.

We Are Wiser Than We Know.

In Skating Over Thin Ice Our Safety Is In Our Speed.

The First Wealth Is Health.

Truth Is The Property Of No Individual But Is The Treasure Of All Men.

Use What Language You Will, You Can Never Say Anything But What You Are.

Our Best Thoughts Come From Others.

All Diseases Run Into One, Old Age.

In Art, The Hand Can Never Execute Anything Higher Than The Heart Can Imagine.

A Chief Event Of Life Is The Day In Which We Have Encountered A Mind That Startled Us.

No Man Ever Prayed Heartily Without Learning Something.

Every Man Supposes Himself Not To Be Fully Understood Or Appreciated.

This Time, Like All Times, Is A Very Good One, If We But Know What To Do With It.

Enthusiasm Is The Mother Of Effort, And Without It Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved.

Fine Manners Need The Support Of Fine Manners In Others.

Write It On Your Heart That Every Day Is The Best Day In The Year.

A Man In Debt Is So Far A Slave.

God Screens Us Evermore From Premature Ideas.

As A Cure For Worrying, Work Is Better Than Whiskey.

A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Adored By Little Statesmen And Philosophers And Divines.

Everything In Nature Contains All The Powers Of Nature. Everything Is Made Of One Hidden Stuff.

To Be Great Is To Be Misunderstood.

Nature Is A Mutable Cloud Which Is Always And Never The Same.

Shallow Men Believe In Luck. Strong Men Believe In Cause And Effect.

When Nature Has Work To Be Done, She Creates A Genius To Do It.

The End Of The Human Race Will Be That It Will Eventually Die Of Civilization.

Every Wall Is A Door.

What We Seek We Shall Find; What We Flee From Flees From Us.

Little Minds Have Little Worries, Big Minds Have No Time For Worries.

The Real And Lasting Victories Are Those Of Peace, And Not Of War.

For Everything You Have Missed, You Have Gained Something Else, And For Everything You Gain, You Lose Something Else.

Every Man Is A Consumer, And Ought To Be A Producer. He Is By Constitution Expensive, And Needs To Be Rich.

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.

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.

There Are As Many Pillows Of Illusion As Flakes In A Snow-storm. We Wake From One Dream Into Another Dream.

Happy Is The Hearing Man; Unhappy The Speaking Man.

We Are Born Believing. A Man Bears Beliefs As A Tree Bears Apples.

Friendship, Like The Immortality Of The Soul, Is Too Good To Be Believed.

The Reason Why The World Lacks Unity, And Lies Broken And In Heaps, Is, Because Man Is Disunited With Himself.

Every Sentence Spoken By Napoleon, And Every Line Of His Writing, Deserves Reading, As It Is The Sense Of France.

Men Admire The Man Who Can Organize Their Wishes And Thoughts In Stone And Wood And Steel And Brass.