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
The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.
The American Scholar (1837)
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.
You can take better care of your secret than another can.
Journals (1822)
The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary.
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock.
Journals (1822)
If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground.
The virtues of society are the vices of the saint.
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
A little integrity is better than any career.
An ingenious anatomist has written a book to prove that races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily changed or destroyed.
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
Journals (1822)
Nothing can be preserved that is not good.
Society and Solitude (1870)