Ralph Waldo Emerson - Wikiquote

 

• Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
  • Poetry and Imagination.

 

• What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.
  • Fortune of the Republic (1878).

• All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
  • Power.

• As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
  • Power.

• Coal is a portable climate.
  • Wealth.

• The world is his, who has money to go over it.
  • Wealth.

 

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

• We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
  • Worship.

• The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
  • Worship.

• Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in cause and effect.
  • Worship.

• People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
  • Worship.

• I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
  • Considerations by the Way.

• Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
  • Considerations by the Way.

• Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
  • Considerations by the Way.

• Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
  • Considerations by the Way.

• Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
  • Beauty.

• Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
  • Beauty.

• If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
  • Beauty.

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

• Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
  • Considerations by the Way.

 

• Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
  • Works and Days.

• A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
  • Works and Days.

• Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
  • Works and Days.

• 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.
  • Success.

• Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
  • Success.

• We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
  • Old Age.

• There is no knowledge that is not power.
  • Old Age.

 Science does not know its debt to imagination.

• Poetry and Imagination.

 

• We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
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• By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Misattributed

• To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
  • Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with "What is Success?” by Bessie Anderson Stanley in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) Edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple

• As soon as there is life there is danger.
  • Actually from De l'Allemagne (1813) by Madame de Stael

• Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
• Variation: If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.
  • Investigations have failed to confirm this in Emerson's writings (John H. Lienhard. "A better moustrap", Engines of our Ingenuity). Also reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 25. Note that Emerson did say, as noted above, "I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods".

• When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
  • Widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson on the internet; however, a presumably definitive source of Emerson's works at http://www.rwe.org fails to confirm any occurrence of this phrase across his works. This phrase is found in remarks attributed to Charles A. Beard in Arthur H. Secord, "Condensed History Lesson", Readers' Digest, February 1941, p. 20; but the origin has not been determined.

• Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
  • Attributed to Emerson in The Gift of Depression : Twenty-one Inspirational Stories Sharing Experience, Strength, and Hope (2001) by John F. Brown, p. 56, no prior occurrence of this a statement has been located; it seems to be derived from one which occurs in The Alchemist (1988) by Paulo Coelho, p. 22: When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

 Source:

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Wikiquote

 Link: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson