Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement. This “Sage of Concord, Massachusetts” wrote Self-Reliance (1841) and other critical essays that have since achieved the status of holy writ.

Born in Boston, Emerson was deeply influenced by his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. Even though she was not formally educated, she was talented and was widely read. She introduced Emerson to diverse philosophies and spiritual values—including the Hindu scriptures that he would revisit in his later years. It was Aunt Mary that motivated many of Emerson’s famous aphorisms, “Always do what you are afraid to do,” and “Despise trifles,” and “Oh, blessed, blessed poverty.”

Emerson got into Harvard at 14. There, he began keeping journals, which he called his “savings bank.” Later in life, he suggested this practice to his friend and protégé, the philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson was an average student and graduated in the middle of his Harvard Divinity School class. In the tradition of many family members before him, he became a Unitarian minister. However, in 1832, after his wife Ellen died of tuberculosis at the age of 19, he was deeply distressed and started to have misgivings about the teachings of the church.

Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and became a protégé of the Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle. After returning to America, he embarked on an exceptional literary career. In his book Nature (1836,) Emerson first introduced Transcendentalism, the idea that spiritual truth could be gained by intuition rather than by traditional doctrine or text.

Emerson was also a wisdom writer and an acclaimed public lecturer. Many of his essays began as journal entries, then developed into lectures, and later refined for publication. He gave some 1,500 speeches in his lifetime about not only his philosophical tenets but also individuality and freedom.

Emerson’s essays and lectures had a profound influence on the philosophers, authors, and poets who came after him. Most prominently, his beliefs and his idealism were strong influences on the works of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, as well as numerous others. His writings are considered masterpieces of 19th-century American literature, religion, and thought.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The borrower runs in his own debt.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another, the practiced person relies on the language of the first.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Communication, Understanding

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Character

The walking of Man is falling forwards.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Progress

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Sleep

We never touch but at points.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Solitude

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run uphill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Prejudice

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love—now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Manners

The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Great

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Society

Necessity does everything well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Necessity

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Marriage

Knowledge exists to be imparted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Teachers, Teaching

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Pride

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Quotations

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts

The masters painted for joy, and knew riot that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Painting

Trust thyself.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Courage, Individuality

If we encountered a man of rare intellect we should ask him what books he read.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Reading, Books

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Beauty

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Conformity, Opinion, Opinions

Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Action

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Wives, Marriage, Wife

We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Past

The hero cannot be common, nor the common the heroic.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Deception

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Freedom

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Complaints, Complaining, Pessimism

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