Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

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 life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

The world belongs to the energetic.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.