Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
1803–1882 United States
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803 – 27 April 1882) was an American philosopher, essayist, and poet.
- United States
- 19th-century poets
- Academics
- Deaths
- Educators
Also known as: Emerson, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Representative Men
Random Ralph Waldo Emerson quote
583 quotes
Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.
Representative Men (1850)
Born for success he seemed,
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.
Nature (1836)
Knowledge is the antidote to fear,—
Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.
Journals (1822)
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"
Ability (1856)
Yield not one inch to all the forces which conspire to make you an echo.
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
Society and Solitude (1870)
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,
There's no god dare wrong a worm.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.
The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.