Skip to content

Friend Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

66 Friend quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Friend quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Ralph Waldo Emerson likens friendship to an immortal soul, a rare treasure that outlasts life itself. He suggests a true friend is better than a flattering echo, and that being a friend means offering honest praise even behind your back. The collection reminds us that to have a buddy, we must first be one.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Keep your friendships in repair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

If you want a friend you need to be a friend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Treat your friend as a spectacle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The best way to have a good friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Friendship buys friendship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The only method to possess a buddy is always to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Neither is life long enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic affair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

It is better to be a thorn in the side of a friend than an echo.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Almost every man we meet requires some civility; requires to be humored; - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A friend is the hope of the heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The only way to have a friend is to be one. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Other authors on Friend

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