Quote

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it at any rate, brag.

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
Rate
Knowing
Science
Cannot
Something
Brag
Bragging

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
What is the end of human life? It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is likewise to make a fortune, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never so long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of his exploding renowned errors, is yet everyday posed and baffled by trivial questions at his own supper table.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have slept or if you have head ache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
People say law but they mean wealth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In the vaunted works of Art, The master-stroke is Nature's part.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
In analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.
Ralph Waldo Emerson