Ralph Waldo Emerson People Quotations

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

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

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

If you want to be great and successful, choose people who are great and successful and walk side by side with them.

How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.

In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose.

A right rule for a club would be, Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised andshocked, who do and let do, and let be, who sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great deal for granted.

Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.

The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.

Ten percent of people can think, another ten percent of people think that they think, and eighty percent of people would rather die than be made to think.

You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made And people whose skin is a different shade.

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

In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.

Some people are born very far from home.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

You never know how you look through other people's eyes.

I like people who like Plato.

The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

People who know how to act are never preachers.

The instinct of the people is right.

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

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say 'what a good speech,' it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce.

It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone.

We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables.

My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.

Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other.

I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.

People seem sheathed in their tough organization.

Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.

Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.

As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.

The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.

Research is not seeing what others do not see, it is seeing the same thing as other people and thinking what they do not.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

The people are to be taken in very small doses.

People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment.

The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping him or herself. Serve and you shall be served. If you love and serve people, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration.

The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people.

Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit

The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.

Where there is no vision a people perish.

All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

People say law but they mean wealth.

We are all wise for other people, none for himself.

People only see what they are prepared to see. If you look for what is good and what you can be grateful for you will find it everywhere.

I like people who can do things

True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together.

People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

People are timid and apologetic; they are no longer upright; they dare not say "I think," "I am," but quote some saint or sage. They are ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.

The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.

When there is no vision, people perish.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.