Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : May 25, 1803

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature hates calculators.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Revolutions go not backward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson