Transcendent Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you do, you need courage.

Love is like wildflowers; it's often found in the most unlikely places.

Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

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

A great man is always willing to be little.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

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

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

First be a good animal.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.

Each man has an aptitude born with him. Do your work.

The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.

Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.

To live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.

All the world loves a lover.

No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

Be not the slave of your own past.

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

Traveling is a fool's paradise.

Love, and you shall be loved.

The First wealth is health.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

Don't be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy.

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn.

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

Life is a progress, and not a station.

A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of beauty.

Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

There I feel that nothing can befall me.

Nature never hurries. Atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.

Patience and fortitude conquer all things.

This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

Nature hates calculators.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

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

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

The years teach much which the days never know.

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

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

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

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Beauty without expression is boring.

The first wealth is health.

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

What you are comes to you.

Self trust is the first secret of success.

To fill the hour--that is happiness.

The language of the street is always strong.

Beware of jokes from which we go away hollow and ashamed.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.

Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.

I have thought that a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

What we call results are beginnings.

The street is full of humiliations to the proud.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'Always do what you are afraid to do.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.

Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.

Concentration is the secret of strength.

Who you are is speaking so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying.

If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.

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

Character is an invincible force, which acts by presence and without means.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

When it is darkest, men see the stars.

One thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Astrology is astronomy brought down to Earth and applied toward the affairs of men.

Sometimes we receive the power to say yes to life. Then peace enters us and makes us whole.

You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

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

History -- a biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Happy will that house be in which the relationships are formed from character.

Pride ruined the angels.

Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry, she carries them.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

For Destiny never swerves nor yields to men the helm.

Be an opener of doors.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live.

Man is a piece of the universe made alive.

What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

No book was ever written down by any but itself.

Every advantage has its tax.

Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

Life is not measured by its length, but by its depth.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

Nature is upheld by antagonism.

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his charities.

Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive and a negative pole.

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.

Society has no bribe for me.

When all shoot at one mark, the gods join in the combat.

There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle.

Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

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

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.

The sensual man conforms thoughts to things;
the poet conforms things to his thoughts.

The great majority of men grow up and grow old in seeming and following.

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold.

It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

The first point of courtesy must always be truth.

No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.

The best of life is conversation.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.

There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Popularity is for dolls.

Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his necessities, his march to the dominion of the world.

My doom and my strength is to be solitary.

The best part of health is fine disposition.

Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother.

The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.

There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man.

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

Every man is a channel through which heaven floweth.

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.

Go where there is no path and leave a trail.

There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.

Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust.

Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

The Sun is the sole inconsumable fireAnd God is the sole inexhaustible Giver.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.

Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.

The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.

The hero is suffered to be himself.

It is with a good book as it is with good company.

Walking has the best value as gymnastics of the mind.

The household is a school of power. There, within the door, learn the tragi-comedy of human life.

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

The health of the eye demands a horizon.

Imitation cannot go above its model.

Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses.

It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other.

If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.