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Quotations from

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Picture of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity.

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Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

knowledge quotations

The charm which Henry [Thoreau] uses for bird and frog and mink is patience. They will not come to him, or show him aright, until he becomes a log among logs, sitting still for hours in the same place; then they come around him and to him, and show themselves at home.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

patience home charm

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

politics wisdom nations money capital

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

philosophy consistency hypocrisy

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

action communication speech

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

slavery

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

quotation originality repition

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly; feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

hunger reason rationality denial

Every artist was first an amateur.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

learning art amateurism

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

possibility plants trees forests

In a virtuous community, men of sense and of principle will always be placed at the head of affairs. In a declining state of public morals, men will be so blinded to their true interests as to put the incapable and unworthy at the helm. It is therefore vain to complain of the follies or crimes of a government. We must lay our hands on our own hearts and say, "Here is the sin that makes the public sin.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

sin morality government interests

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

honesty truth privacy

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

life experiment

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Traveling is a fool's paradise.… 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

identity self travel paradise