Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot do a kindness too soon.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The beautiful is never plentiful.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life too near paralyses art.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What potent blood hath modest May.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is too short to waste.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Popularity is for dolls.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power and speed be hands and feet.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today is a king in disguise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first lesson of history is that evil is good.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our opinions of the world, are confessions of character.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a tie between men to have read the same book.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it. -”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The soul is superior to its knowledge; wiser than any of its works.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our chief want in life, is, someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend.…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of sympathetic life.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift.…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Thus is man made equal to every event. He can face danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful body, he can…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“They should own who can administer, not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs.…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson