Quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"A good indignation brings out all one's powers."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power   

"Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power   

"Wherever there is power there is age."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power   

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power
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"There is no knowledge that is not power."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on power
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"When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on praise   

"Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on praise   

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"Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on preachers and preaching   

"The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on preachers and preaching   

"Today is a king in disguise."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on present   

"Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on present   

"Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on present   

"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on present   

"The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on president   

"The walking of Man is falling forwards."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on progress   

"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on progress   

"All promise outruns performance."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on promises   

"No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on property   

"If a man owns land, the land owns him."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on property   

"Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on property   

"I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose..."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on purpose   

"Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on purpose   

"The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on pursuit   

"The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quality   

"The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"Our best thoughts come from others."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on radicals   

"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on reality   

"Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on reform   

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"Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on rejection   

"The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on religion
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"Men are respectable only as they respect."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on respectability
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"Every revolution was first a thought in one man?s mind."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on evolution
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"If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on evolution   

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"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on war
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