Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

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

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan.

Goodness that preaches undoes itself.

No one suspects the days to be gods.

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

You become what you think about all day long.

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.