Thought Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

51 Thought quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Thought quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that every action starts with a thought, and that ideas can hold us like prisoners for a while. He also says that only those who can truly entertain a thought own it, making thinking a rare gift.

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

Thought makes everything fit for use.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Every action has an ancestor of a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The key to every man is his thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“thought can never ripen into truth.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Thought is the seed of action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Nature is transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thought for the morrow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“The man not only thinks, but speaks and acts. Every thought that arises in the mind, in its rising aims to pass…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

“Thought is the bud, language the blossom and action the fruit behind it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

There was never anything that did not proceed from a thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of nature do undulate and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

Other authors on Thought

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