Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Quotations

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.

All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.

We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion.

A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.

The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.

The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existance of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands.

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

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

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

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.

To laugh often and love much... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self... this is to have succeeded.

Those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man, than anything which he said.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Every man contemplates an angel in his future self.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term "abandonment" to describe the self- surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.

The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.

It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.

Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise.

The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

Sole and self-commanded works, Fears not undermining days, Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks In reaction and recoil, Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascinationfor all educated Americans.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed.

The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has heenterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.

The inmost in due time becomes the outmost.

Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

A skillful man reads his dreams for self-knowledge, yet not the details but the quality

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

We talk of choosing our friends, but our friends are self-elected.

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment.

Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

Self-command is the main elegance.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength.

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge.

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

I admire answers to which no answers can be made.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.

The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to seserve that you should.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle.

What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.

Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole subject we study and learn.

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself.

Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, - a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.

Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.