Top 500 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

303. “Pride ruined the angels.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

304. “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

305. “For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

307. “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

308. “The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

309. “Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

310. “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

311. “But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

312. “We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

313. “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

314. “It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

315. “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

316. “The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

317. “The first point of courtesy must always be truth.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

318. “The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

319. “True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

320. “I am become a transparent eyeball...”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

321. “America is another name for opportunity.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

322. “To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

323. “A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

324. “As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

325. “There is always safety in valor.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

326. “Imitation cannot go above its model.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

327. “Real men don’t conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

328. “The highest revelation is that God is in every man.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

329. “A man’s library is a sort of harem.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

330. “When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

331. “To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch...”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

332. “Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

333. “Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

334. “Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

335. “Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

336. “We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

337. “Machinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

338. “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

339. “Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

340. “Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

341. “A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

342. “The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

343. “The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

344. “Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

345. “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

346. “Men are respectable only as they respect.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

347. “The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

348. “Music and Wine are one.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

349. “Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

350. “God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson