Ralph Waldo Emerson
American essayist and poet, 1803-1882
100 quotes.
Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
- A great integrity makes us immortal; an admiration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us above fear.
- A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
- A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.
- A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.
- An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.
- As to what we call the masses, and common men;--there are no common men.
- But power dwells with cheerfulness; hope puts us in a working mood, whilst despair is no muse, and untunes the active powers.
- Character is higher than intellect.
- Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.
- Concentration is the secret of strength.
- Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
- Do your work, respecting the excellence of the work, and not its acceptableness.
- Don’t be timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
- Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
- Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
- Every artist was first an amateur.
- Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor; we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
- Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.
- Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call.
- Every noble activity makes room for itself.
- Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between two.
- For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
- Give me health and a day, and I will make ridiculous the pomp of emperors.
- Good thoughts are no better than good dreams unless they be executed.
- He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
- Hitch your wagon to a star.
- I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into patronage.
- [I]mport into Education the wisdom of life. Leave this military hurry and adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret is patience.
- Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
- If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground.
- It is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself.
- It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
- It is enough if you work in the right direction.
- It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another, without helping himself.
- Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
- Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
- Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.
- Make yourself necessary to somebody.