Ralph Waldo Emerson Life Quotations

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

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

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

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.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

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.

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

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

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

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

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.

In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.

A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be And life pulsates in rock or tree.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Money often costs too much.

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going

All life is a nap. The more naps you take the better.

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

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

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

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.

Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

Every man has a choice between love of truth and love of repose. Love of repose brings him a solid reputation and peaceful life; love of truth keeps him in suspense. A man who loves truth respects the highest law of his being.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Football is four 15-minute quarters. Plus timeouts and commercials.

Live, let live, and help live

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.

All life is an experiment.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

Convert life into truth.

Love, and you shall be loved.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for the deliverance from fear. It is the storm within that endangers him, not the storm without.

All mankind love a lover.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it

Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

Life itself is ... a sleep within a sleep.

Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.

A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.

Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.

The best of life is conversation.

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,--these, and the wish to serve,--to add somewhat to the well-being of men.

Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and chimneyside of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous front.

The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds.

I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.

Every thing admonishes us how needlessly long life is.

We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.

We are imprisoned in life in the company of persons powerfully unlike us.

Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance,--what ample borrowers of eternity they are!

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.