Top 500 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word...”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

252. “You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

253. “No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby – so helpless and so ridiculous.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

254. “The library is the worst group of people ever assembled in history. They’re mean, conniving, rude, and extremely well-read, which makes them dangerous.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

255. “Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

256. “Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionaliti es or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

257. “Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

258. “What is the hardest task in the world? To think.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

259. “The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

260. “Money is of no value; it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill of the spender.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

261. “Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

262. “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

263. “Be an opener of doors.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

264. “Do your thing, and I shall know you.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

265. “That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

266. “Every man I meet is in some way my superior.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

267. “A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

268. “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

269. “Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

270. “Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

271. “Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

272. “The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

273. “A friend is the hope of the heart.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

274. “The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

275. “The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

276. “We walk alone in the world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

277. “Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

278. “As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

279. “By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

280. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

281. “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

282. “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

283. “A man is a god in ruins.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

284. “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody’s name, or he happened to be there at right time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

285. “For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

286. “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping him or herself. Serve and you shall be served. If you love and serve people, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

287. “The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

288. “The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

289. “Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

290. “Travel is a fool’s paradise.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

291. “A day is a miniature eternity.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

292. “Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

293. “Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

294. “To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

295. “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

296. “Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

297. “Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

298. “Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

299. “We ask for long life, but ’tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

300. “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson