Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Ralph Waldo Emerson Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: May 25, 1803
  • Died: Apr 27, 1882

Ralph 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 gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

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

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

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

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

All mankind love a lover.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

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 friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening, only with his legs.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Nature hates calculators.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Earth laughs in flowers.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

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

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

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

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

A great man is always willing to be little.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Money often costs too much.

Every artist was first an amateur.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

The years teach much which the days never know.

All diseases run into one, old age.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The first wealth is health.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Men are what their mothers made them.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

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

Nothing external to you has any power over you.