Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Related topics: Wisdom

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every wall is a door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you do, you need courage.
Whatever course you decide upon,
there is always someone to tell you
that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising
that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be great is to be misunderstood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach much which the days never know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual
but is the treasure of all men.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues
have never been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music takes us out of the actual
and whispers to us dim secrets
that startle our wonder as to who we are.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Win as if you were used to it,
lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Little minds have little worries,
big minds have no time for worries.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before we acquire great power
we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is all gates, all opportunities,
strings of tension waiting to be struck.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth laughs in flowers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Words are also actions,
and actions are a kind of words.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the uttermost meaning of the words,
thought is devout, and devotion is thought.
Deep calls unto deep.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

People seem not to see that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom has its root in goodness,
not goodness its root in wisdom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Judge your natural character
by what you do in your dreams.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bad times have a scientific value.
These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-trust is the first secret of success.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There comes a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance,
that imitation is suicide,
that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sum of wisdom is that
time is never lost that is devoted to work.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the past, I have nothing to do;
nor with the future. I live now.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse,
and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled
in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do the thing you fear,
and death of fear is certain.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,
a possession for all time.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the quality of the moment,
not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People do not seem to realize that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals,
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men or men of great gifts
you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants,
and to serve them one's self?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

For everything you have missed,
you have gained something else,
and for everything you gain,
you lose something else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of the shadows of life are caused
by standing in our own sunshine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. -
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust your instinct to the end,
though you can render no reason.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie