Transcendent Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Good nature is stronger than tomahawks.

Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.

Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

The noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God.

Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

Never miss an opportunity of noticing anything of beauty .

Let not the author eat up the man, so that he shall be all balcony and no house.

It is one soul which animates all men.

What is there of the divine in a load of brick? What ... in a barber shop? ... Much. All.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.

Our best history is still poetry.

Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book.

Blessed are those who have no talent!

The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.

Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?

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

Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?

The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues.

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.

An artist spends himself like the crayon in his hand, till he is all gone.

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Don't ever give up on something or someone that you can't go a full day without thinking about.

In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.

Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might.

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant fact of life.

How much finer things are in composition than alone.

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

A forte always makes a foible.

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

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams if you don't follow through.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb.

For beauty is God's handwriting... And, thank God for it as a cup of His blessing.

Know then, that the world exists for you.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

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

Fame is proof that people are gullible.

Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground.

With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.

The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

Whatever you do, you need courage.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

The whole value of the dime is in knowing what to do with it.

The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.

All substances the cunning chemist Time
Melts down into that liquor of my life.

Nature encourages no looseness; pardons no errors.

All life is an experiment.

I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities.

Moderation in all things, especially moderation.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.

Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.

There is properly no history, only biography.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.

You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

No society can ever be so large as one man.

The soul circumscribes all things.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.

The ornaments of our homes are the friends that visit it.

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow.

You have a place to live in this world which no other man can occupy; hence no competitors.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

The pest of society is egotists.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

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

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?

The creation of beauty is art.

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended.

If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.