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“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us”: A Collection of Well-Known Quotations by American Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a well-known American philosopher, essayist and poet. Emerson was born in Massachusetts in May 1803. Emerson died April 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts.

Emerson is well-known as one thought-leader of the Transcendentalist movement.

Emerson was a well-regarded writer and is still often quoted in speeches and in print. We have arranged some of his more famous quotations for your reading pleasure.

And Now The Ralph Waldo Emerson Famous Quotations

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

Nothing, at last, is sacred; but the integrity of your own mind.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air …

Imitation is suicide.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely…

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

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

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Skill to do comes of doing.

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

Real friendship is shown in times of trouble prosperity is full of friends.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

In England every man you meet is some man’s son in America, he may be some man’s father.

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