Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson with men

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American poet and philosopher

Lived from: 1803 - 1882

Category: Philosophers | Poets (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 25 may 1803 Died: 27 april 1882

  • 'Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
  • Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
  • Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.
  • The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption - pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.
  • Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.
  • That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
  • Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.
  • Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.
  • The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
  • The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
  • Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
  • Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
  • What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.
  • Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
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Quotes 1 till 20 of 46.

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  • 'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • A man's personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.
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  • Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
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  • In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men are what their mothers made them.
    The Conduct of Life (1860) Fate
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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  • Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
    ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What are the most famous quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson?

The two most famous quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson are:

  • "'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence."
  • "It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon."

When did Ralph Waldo Emerson live?

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 and died in the year 1882.