Top 500 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

152. “Stand guard at the portal of your mind.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

153. “If you want to be great and successful, choose people who are great and successful and walk side by side with them.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

154. “Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

155. “Cultivate an attitude of gratitude, of giving and forgiving. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

156. “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

157. “Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

158. “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

159. “Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

160. “All great successes are the triumph of persistence.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

161. “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

162. “It’s a luxury to be understood.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

163. “Be a gift and a benediction.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

164. “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

165. “When there is no vision, people perish.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

166. “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

167. “If I am the devil’s child, I will live then, by the devil.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

168. “A man is known by the books he reads.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

169. “Life is a festival only to the wise.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

170. “The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

171. “Our strength grows out of our weakness.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

172. “Nothing external to you has any power over you.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

173. “It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.’”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

174. “The secret is the answer to all that has been, all that is, and all that will ever be.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

175. “When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

176. “Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

177. “Money often costs too much.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

178. “I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

179. “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

180. “One idea lights a thousand candles.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

181. “Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

182. “Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

183. “Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

184. “The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

185. “Thoughts rule the world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

186. “If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

187. “I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

188. “Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

189. “Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

190. “Skill to do comes of doing.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

191. “Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

192. “Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

193. “Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

194. “If you know you are right, stay the course even though the whole world seems to be against you and everyone you know questions your judgment. When you prevail – and you eventually will if you stick to the job – they will all tell you that they knew all along you could do it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

195. “Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

196. “Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

197. “We must be our own before we can be another’s.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Featured in: Soulmate Quotes

198. “We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

199. “To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

200. “Insist upon yourself. Be original.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson