81 Smart Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (born May 25, 1803, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. – died April 27, 1882, Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.) was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher, lecturer, and essayist.
Emerson is best known for his two volumes of essays: Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844). These two collections represent the core of his thinking and include some well-known essays such as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet, and Experience.
Key Takeaways
- Emerson expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature (1836).
- As a champion of individualism, his work influenced numerous thinkers, writers, and poets.
- Emerson presented his thoughts through essays and public lectures across the United States.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay VI. Friendship, Page 176
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.Nature (ed. 1836), Chapter III. Beauty, Page 29
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.Society and Solitude (ed. 1870), Essay VII. Works and Days, Page 157
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VII. Considerations by the Way, Page 230
We must be our own before we can be another’s.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay VI. Friendship, Page 174
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VI. Worship, Page 191
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay XII. Art, Page 295
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume VI, Page 302
For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 81
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.The American Scholar (1837), (ed. 1901), Page 31
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VIII. Beauty, Page 263
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay II. Self-Reliance, Page 47
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay VII. Prudence, Page 196
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume VI, Page 410
To be great is to be misunderstood.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay II. Self-Reliance, Page 47
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.Letters and Social Aims (ed. 1876), Essay VII. Progress of Culture, Page 215
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.Society and Solitude (ed. 1870), Essay VII. Works and Days, Page 142
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.Representative Men (ed. 1850), Essay II. Plato; or, the Philosopher, Page 46
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay VI. Friendship, Page 163
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.Letters and Social Aims (ed. 1876), Essay VII. Progress of Culture, Page 217
We are always getting ready to live but never living.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume III, Page 276
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.Lectures and Biographical Sketches (ed. 1887), Essay I. Demonology, Page 26
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He fails to make his place good in the world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth. Nor can he do justice to his genius, without making some larger demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay III. Wealth, Page 73
A great man is always willing to be little.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 97
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.Essays: Second Series (ed. 1844), Essay II. Experience, Page 55
Science does not know its debt to imagination.Letters and Social Aims (ed. 1876), Essay I. Poetry and Imagination, Page 16
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay I. Fate, Page 9
In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay VII. Prudence, Page 194
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VI. Worship, Page 196
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume III, Page 74
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.Representative Men (ed. 1850), Essay VI. Napoleon; or, the Man of the World, Page 252
Knowledge is the knowing that we can not know.Representative Men (ed. 1850), Essay IV. Montaigne; or, the Skeptic, Page 173
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay IX. The Over-Soul, Page 221
People only see what they are prepared to see.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume IX, Page 548
Genius always finds itself a century too early.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume V, Page 498
Wisdom has its root in goodness, and not goodness its root in wisdom.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume IX, Page 122
Every burned book or house enlightens the world.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 98
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume VII, Page 26
Find more about Ralph Waldo Emerson on Amazon
For every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 93
Truth is the property of no individual, but is the treasure of all men.Letters and Social Aims (ed. 1876), Essay VI. Quotation and Originality, Page 183
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay IX. The Over-Soul, Page 244
Every hero becomes a bore at last.Representative Men (ed. 1850), Essay I. Uses of Great Men, Page 32
Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 96
We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay V. Love, Page 155
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay I. Fate, Page 40
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay II. Self-Reliance, Page 69
The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay V. Behavior, Page 158
In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.Nature, Addresses and Lectures (ed. 1849), Chapter X. The Young American, Page 374
A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay I. History, Page 4
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.Representative Men (ed. 1850), Essay II. Plato; or, the Philosopher, Page 47
Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay X. Circles, Page 260
Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay III. Compensation, Page 81
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.Letters and Social Aims (ed. 1876), Essay VI. Quotation and Originality, Page 190
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.Society and Solitude (ed. 1870), Essay V. Domestic Life, Page 115
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay X. Circles, Page 265
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume V, Page 164
The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay I. Fate, Page 21
Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay XI. Intellect, Page 283
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay II. Self-Reliance, Page 73
Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay V. Behavior, Page 163
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay I. History, Page 11
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VIII. Beauty, Page 264
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.Essays: First Series (ed. 1841), Essay II. Self-Reliance, Page 41
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.Celebration of Intellect: An Address at Tufts College (July 10, 1861)
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.Essays: Second Series (ed. 1844), Essay III. Character, Page 106
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.The American Scholar (1837), (ed. 1901), Page 14
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.Lectures and Biographical Sketches (ed. 1887), Essay VIII. The Preacher, Page 223
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.The American Scholar (1837), (ed. 1901), Page 50
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume IV, Page 16
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay IV. Culture, Page 142
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume VI, Page 298
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.The Conduct of Life (ed. 1860), Essay VI. Worship, Page 197
If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. 1909), Volume VIII, Page 528
Misattributed
There is no defeat except from within. There is really no insurmountable barrier, save your own inherent weakness of purpose.The Critic (1887) by Robert Burns Wilson
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.Thoughts on the Business of Life, Forbes (1945) by Ronald E. Osborn
The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.Past and Present (1843) by Thomas Carlyle
The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.The Sunday Star (1962) by Leo Rosten
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers (1903) by Muriel Strode
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God’s hand-writing.Politics for the People (1848) by Charles Kingsley
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.Meditations in Wall Street (1940) by Henry Stanley Haskins
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on some of our links, we may earn a commission. Read our editorial process.