Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

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

The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness

Sorrow makes us all children again.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

Blame is safer than praise.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Our strength grows out of our weaknesses

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

Knowledge is the only elegance.

Self-command is the main elegance.

At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back.

Plants are the young of the world. Vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect man, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hardbeaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.

The secret of ugliness consists of not irregularity, but in being uninteresting

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."