‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Books, Reading, Literature
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Identity
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The hero cannot be common, nor the common the heroic.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Truth
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Genius
Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Passion, Secret, Nature, Dream, Act, Desire, Future
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are certainly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, and must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Manners, Beauty, Virtue
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho’ her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: God
Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Wisdom
The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Youth, Admiration
There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Luck
Genius appeals to the future.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Genius, Future
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Character
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Thought, Mind, Reason, Brave, Ideas, Dreams
We are much better believers in immortality than we can give grounds for.—The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in propositions.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Immortality
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Feelings, Fear
I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Learn
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Solitude
All promise outruns performance.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Promises
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
Wherever work is done, victory is attained.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Victory
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Nature
But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Patience and fortitude conquer all things.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Patience, One liners, Resilience
Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: America
The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Great
To believe in luck … is skepticism.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Fortune, Luck
In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: America
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Health, Optimism, Confidence, Trust, Leadership
Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Beauty, Flowers
Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Cities
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Censorship
We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly in to the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: The Present
We should be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of the best light.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Courtesy
There is nothing capricious in nature; and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Desire, Desires
That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no Gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is a grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Wisdom, The Present
Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are of different opinions at different hours but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Truth
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
Walt Whitman American Poet
Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
Amos Bronson Alcott American Teacher
John Cage American Composer
John Weiss American Author
Kahlil Gibran Lebanese-born American Philosopher
William James American Philosopher
Eric Hoffer American Philosopher
John Dewey American Philosopher