Best 3772 quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson on MyQuotes

A beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of fine arts.

A beautiful person among the Greeks, was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods; and we can pardonpride, when a woman possesses such a figure that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world.

A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.

A breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the direction of Right and Necessity. It is the air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds into order and orbit.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

A bullet had found him, his blood ran out as he cried. No money could save him, so he laid down and died. Ooh, what a lucky man he was.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.

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

A child convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. The reward for a thing well done, is to have done it.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

A collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare; but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

Action is the process whereby what is not fully formed passes into expressive consciousness.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

Adult males are what their moms designed them.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

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

A day is a miniature eternity.

Add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame.

A deep man believes that the evil eye can whither, the heart's blessing can heal, and that love can overcome all odds.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

A determined man, by his very attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat, and begins to conquer.

A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. A fop of fields is no better than his brother on Broadway.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

A fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us

A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.

A fly is as untamable as a hyena.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

A forte always makes a foible.

A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.

A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.