Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Presently we pass to some other object which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example, a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying-out of gardens.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only true gift is a portion of yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To laugh often and love much... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self... this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson