Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our best thoughts come from others.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are respectable only as they respect.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every revolution was first a thought in one man?s mind.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world's eye.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it... Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The never-ending task of self improvement.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists--talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

He is great who confers the most benefits.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can help another without helping himself.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay,

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is a hospital of incurables.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We walk alone in the world.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We never touch but at points.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sorrow makes us children again.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The soul's emphasis is always right.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is -- Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every advantage has its tax.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson