Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Envy is ignorance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science does not know its debt to imagination.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We never touch but at points.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your reactions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I’m not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self command is the main elegance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like the silence of a church, before the service begins better than any preaching.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reality is more excellent than the report.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man owns land, the land owns him.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson