Top 500 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Build therefore your own world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

402. “Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

403. “Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

404. “Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

405. “Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

406. “There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

407. “Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

408. “The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

409. “I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

410. “A nation never falls but by suicide.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

411. “Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

412. “It is about your outlook towards life. You can either regret or rejoice.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

413. “The primary wisdom is intuition.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

414. “Grow angry slowly – there’s plenty of time.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

415. “Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

416. “What we call results are beginnings.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

418. “It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

419. “Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

420. “Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

421. “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

422. “I am a part and parcel of God.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

423. “Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

424. “I am Defeated all the time, yet to Victory I am born.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

425. “Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

426. “In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

427. “I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

428. “We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

429. “Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

430. “Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

431. “Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

432. “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

433. “Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

434. “For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

435. “This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

436. “Give me truths for I am weary of the surfaces.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

437. “Whatever it is, it’s better in the wind.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

438. “Let the bird sing without deciphering the song.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

439. “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

441. “All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

442. “Man’s actions are the picture book of his creeds.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

443. “The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

444. “Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

445. “If we live truly, we shall see truly.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

446. “You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

447. “I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

448. “The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

449. “Every person has his or her own vocation-talent is the call.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

450. “You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson