Poet · American · 1803 – 1882 · 245 quotes
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poet · American · 1803 – 1882
The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
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.
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
A great man is always willing to be little.
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
As soon as there is life there is danger.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
The years teach much which the days never know.
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
We must be our own before we can be another's.
