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Greatness Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

134 Greatness quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Greatness quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Nature whispers secrets to those who listen, and Emerson writes that a great mind often learns from the world itself. He warns that talent can grow at the cost of character, urging a balance between skill and moral strength. He also describes a self‑reliant person who needs no extra tools to be whole.

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Every man is eloquent once in his life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To be simple is to be great

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Great men are sincere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men are respectable only as they respect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man should give us a sense of mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A great man is always willing to be little.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every man is a new method.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every man's task [his 'great dream' and impassioned life-goal] is his life preserver.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Let him be great, and love shall follow him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Great men exist that there may be greater men.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There are men who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion.…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every great man is unique.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men in all ways are better than they seem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All men in the abstract are just and good

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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More by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The order of things consents to virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am; therefore, I had nothing better to do than to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson