Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Music is the poor man’s Parnassus.

America is a country of young men.

We do not count a man’s years, until he has nothing else to count.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money was not scarce?

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

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

Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

A person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.

They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth.

The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.

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.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.