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Ralph Waldo Emerson

137 quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. His essays, including "Self-Reliance" and "Nature," champion individuality, freedom, and the inherent goodness of people and nature. He remains one of America's most influential thinkers.

“Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death

All Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love

“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life

“A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage

“Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom

“Money often costs too much.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money

“With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Future

“Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art

“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good

“Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society

“God enters by a private door into every individual.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Faith

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art

“The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

God

“The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men

“Science does not know its debt to imagination.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagination

“Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Age

“Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth