Ralph Waldo Emerson Truth Quotations

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

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.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is: Let there be truth between us two forevermore

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.

...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs....

The greatest homage to truth is to use it.

Convert life into truth.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

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

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

Truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said.

You need not fear to handle the truth roughly. She is no invalid.

[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.

The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.

How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

The life of truth is cold.

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

If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.

Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

The gentleman is a man of truth.

Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship; never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.

Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore.

Truth is the summit of being.

Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.

But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.

If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.

The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

For he that feeds men serveth few; He serves all who dares be true.

Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.

Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.

The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.

I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it.

Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds, in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness.

Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs,--not only dust and stones, but errors and lies.

But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive orbrute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.

Wherever the truth is injured, defend it.

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