Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotations
We found 322 matching quotations.
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
This world we live in is but thickened light.
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions the surest poison is time.
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see -- not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.
Do not 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 course, 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.
Work is victory.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invated by worry, fret and anxiety.
We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves.
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops?no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
What we call results are beginnings.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
One man's justice is another's injustice one man's beauty another's ugliness one man's wisdom another's folly.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a God playing the fool.
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Be and not seem.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Each man has his own vocation his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
In the woods is perpetual youth.
If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Imitation is suicide.
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.
Give all to love obey thy heart.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the ordinary.
The glory of friendship is not the outstreched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson in life who does not every day surmount a fear.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.
Truth is the summit of being justice is the application of it to affairs.
Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
Hitch your wagon to a star.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
To fill the hour-that is happiness.
The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.
It seems to me that perfection of means and confusion of goals seems to characterize our age.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.
In England every man you meet is some man's son in America, he may be some man's father.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down aspires and not despairs.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
No facts are to me sacred none are profane I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
What greater pain could mortals have than this To see their children dead before their eyes
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
The world belongs to the energetic.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.
We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting the best property of all -- friends?
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
Nature hates calculators.
The years teach much which the days never knew.
Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others with out getting a few drops on yourself.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
Love and you shall be loved.
Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow.
Life is a festival only to the wise.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
There are always those who think they know what is your responsibility better than you do.
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
Insist on yourself never imitate... Every great man is unique.
Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Money often costs too much.
The less government we have the better.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce
Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
What is the hardest thing in the world To think.
A weed is just a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.
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 beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
Thought is the seed of action.
He who has a thousand friendsHas not a friend to spare,While he who has one enemyShall meet him everywhere.
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Every artist was first an amateur.
The reward for a thing well done is to have done it.
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-that is genius.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child.
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
Spiritual force is stronger than material force thoughts rule the world.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
I hate quotations.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend? The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
We become what we think about all day long.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
Give all to love; obey thy heart.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Every sweet has its sour every evil its good.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
The education of the will is the object of our existence.
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.
Skill to do comes of doing.
The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
All life is an experiment.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul unbelief, in denying them.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears beauty.
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
Children are all foreigners.
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Adopt the pace of nature.
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
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. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.
Knowledge exists to be imparted.
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
They say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.
Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments yoiu make the better.
As we grow oldthe beauty steals inward.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
When it is darkest, men see the stars.
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
As we grow old?the beauty steals inward.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
I awoke with devout thanksgiving for my friends.
Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Fame is proof that people are gullible.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool it will be all one a hundred years hence.
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
What a new face courage puts on everything.
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
As soon as there is life there is danger.
It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.
The faith that stand on authority is not faith.
Love is the essence of God.
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
The first wealth is health.
He is great who confers the most benefits.
A good intention clothes itself with power.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.
The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities.
Life is a progress, and not a station.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
I used to always think that I'd look back on us crying and laugh, but, I never thought I'd look back on us laughing and cry.
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else and for everything you gain, you lose something.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air?
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
Men are what their mothers made them.
Character is what can do without success.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Never read a book that is not a year old.
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Common sense is as rare as genius.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
What is a weed A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
...the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude.
Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show for any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
All mankind love a lover.
A man is related to all nature.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.