Quotes · Skopia

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Person·Ralph Waldo Emerson✕clear

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.2

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.1

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1837

★ 7.0

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.0

Personal journal

Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1838

★ 6.9

Men are what their mothers made them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fate · 1860

★ 5.5

Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considerations by the Way · 1860

★ 5.5

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Scholar · 1837

★ 5.4

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literary Ethics · 1838

★ 5.3

Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature · 1836

★ 5.2

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Montaigne; or, the Skeptic · 1850

★ 4.5

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 4.4

Personal journal

With the Past as past I have nothing to do, nor with the Future as future. I live now.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1839

★ 3.8

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Essay · Philosophical literature

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Personal journal

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1843

★ 3.8

To fill the hour—that is happiness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 3.8

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