Our best thoughts come from others.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Ralph Waldo Emerson

Portrait 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...

More quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

God intelligence intellect spontaneity

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

strength intelligence character intellect soul

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

friendship friends virtue

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 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

truth power self-reliance integrity

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

humanity history commonality mind power

More quotations tagged with “thoughts”

Maybe if you thought about them, people never really disappeared. It sounded so corny, but there was a scientific explanation for it, too. If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them. Everything you shared with a person is still there swirling around in the universe.

—Wendy Wunder in The Probability of Miracles

people thoughts loss energy

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.

—Mahatma Gandhi

man identity thoughts

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.

—Stanislaw J. Lec

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

—Rene Descartes

History

21 Sep 2013 Added