There is one mind common to all individual men. … What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “History”, p. 1
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, p. 30
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half posession.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, p. 44
A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Compensation”, p. 63
No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”, p. 69
And why drag this dead weight of Sunday school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people agains their will in a pew and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”, p. 72
The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of circumstances of the moment.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”, p. 82
If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the substance is not.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”, p. 85
Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, and forthwith troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship”, p. 101
You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship”, p. 110
What right have I to write on prudence, whereof I have little, and that of negative sort? … I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that I must have some other garden.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Prudence”, p. 116
We write from inspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Prudence”, p. 116
… hospitality must be for service and not for show, or it pulls down the host.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism”, p. 133
A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision his living is natural and poetic.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism”, pp. 133–4
The characteristics of heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism”, p. 137
What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”, p. 161
But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, and endless seeker with no past at my back.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”, p. 168
Thus in our fine arts, not imitation but creation is the aim. In landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. … he will come to value the expression of nature and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he must inscribe the character and not the features, and must esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”, p. 184
There is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. … No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. … Here is the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”, p. 187
When I came at last to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple and true.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”, p. 189
The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive the soul as he also receives, but they more.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”, p. 196
All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience”, p. 219
There is no adaption or universal applicability in men, but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience”, p. 225
The purest literary talent appears at one time great, at another time small, but character is of stellar and undiminishable greatness.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Character”, p. 242
Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road and leaving nothing to be conquered by pure space.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Manners”, p. 261
I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Manners”, p. 268
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. … Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts”, p. 278
Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. … it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and talents, but a goldsmith’s.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts”, p. 279
He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts”, p. 280
For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do anything well who does not esteem his work to be of importance. My work may be of none, but I must not think it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”, p. 293
A man who cannot be acquainted with me taxes me, looking from afar at me ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end—not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Politics”, p. 307
But there are no such men as we fable; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington, such as we have made. We consecrate a great deal of nonsense because it was allowed by great men. There is none without his foible. I believe that if an angel should come to chant the chorus of moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist”, p. 312
I believe it is the conviction of the purest men that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions has added to his fitness for his own work.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “New England Reformers”, p. 342
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”, p. 67
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholars’ idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—when the sun is hid and the starts withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”, p. 68
I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power. It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”, p.70
When each comes forth from his mother’s womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one pair. So he has but one future, and that is already predetermined in his lobes and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form. All the privilege and all the legislation of the world cannot meddle or help to make a poet or a prince of him.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fate”, p. 334
In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more of these drones perish, the better for the hive.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fate”, p. 334
True courage is not ostentations; men who wish to insire terror seem thereby to confess themselves cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they know how potent it is with themselves.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Courage”
Every really able man, if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Immortality”