Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship

"Ne te quaesiveris extra." (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Imitation is suicide.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.