Quote

Character is that which can do without success.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Humility
Fame
Success
Character
Without
Definitions

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Words are alive. Cut them and they bleed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Knowledge exists to be imparted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Self-command is the main elegance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A man complained that on his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbor's. I advised him to buy it, and it would never seem long again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Let us leave hurry to slaves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The borrower runs in his own debt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are thevictims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson