Quill / Authors / Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882) left the Unitarian ministry and became one of the best-known lecturers and essayists in America, living for most of his adult life in Concord, Massachusetts. Quill quotes Nature, Society and Solitude, and his two series of Essays, including Self-Reliance and Circles.
His sentences come out well on their own because many began life in his journals and lectures. The paragraphs around them can feel loose, and he contradicts himself without much concern. Taking one sentence at a time is a fair way to read him.
60 lines shown, from the 221 in Quill. Only lines checked against a public-domain text appear on this page.
Essays: First Series
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With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
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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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then …
Every thought is a prison also.
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… be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your horizon.
We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver.
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The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man’s relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love; yet, if I have a friend I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs …
The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin.
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… overcome.” Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June.
A great man is always willing to be little.
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Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got …
Life alone can impart life; and though we should burst we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable.
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… his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the people say, ‘What poetry! what genius!’ it still needs fuel to make fire. That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart life; and though we should burst we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated and not to be overawed, decides upon every …
Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.
Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series.
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
Greatness appeals to the future.
Far off, men swell, bully and threaten; bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.
The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee.
Love, and you shall be loved.
Life only avails, not the having lived.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.
Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then?
Nature will not have us fret and fume.
A man cannot speak but he judges himself.
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.
We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.
Society and Solitude
Read Society and Solitude on Project Gutenberg
Complaining never so loud, and with never so much reason, is of no use.
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library.
Good-will makes insight, as one finds his way to the sea by embarking on a river.
Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior.
Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.
Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.
The use of history is to give value to the present hour and its duty.
If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground.
You must hear the bird’s song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.
True courage is not ostentatious; men who wish to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves cowards.
If you do not use the tools, they use you.
We ask for long life, but ’tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify.
Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.
Letters and Social Aims
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We wish to live for what is great, not for what is mean.
What a new face courage puts on everything!
A man's action is only a picture-book of his creed.
Let that belief which you hold alone, have free course.
If your subject do not appear to you the flower of the world at this moment, you have not rightly chosen it.
Stay at home in your mind.
Compensation
Blame is safer than praise.
The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power.
Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.
Nature
Read Nature on Project Gutenberg
We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
Build, therefore, your own world.
The sun shines to-day also.
Self-Reliance
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Essays: Second Series
Read Essays: Second Series on Project Gutenberg
We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance.
Character is nature in the highest form.
Heroism
The characteristic of heroism is its persistency.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism.
Art
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
New England Reformers
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
Circles
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Representative Men
Read Representative Men on Project Gutenberg
Serving others is serving us.
Gifts
Necessity does everything well.
The Over-Soul
Let your feet run, but your mind need not.
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