The quotations of

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American philosopher

1803–1882

102 quotes, most often on Friendship, Nature and Beauty. Part of the Poets collection.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
Journal (27 June 1839)
- Freedom
- Poetry
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
The Method of Nature (1841), p. 25
- Love
- Wisdom
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,⁠—that is genius.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Genius
- Thinking
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Genius
- Ideas
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Character
- Inspiration
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. 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.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Character
- Freedom
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Character
- Wisdom
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Thinking
- Wisdom
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Happiness
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
Brahma (1857)In context
- God
- Religion
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being
The Rhodora (1839)In context
- Beauty
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that 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.
Self-Reliance (1841)In context
- Education
- Envy

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