Quote

Great men exist that there might be greater men.

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
Men
Exist
Greater
Might
Great

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image
No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned much is to say on both sides,and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
There is one mind common to all individual men
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Among the map makers of each generation are the risk takers, those who see the opportunities, seize the moment and expand man's vision of the future
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping him or herself. Serve and you shall be served. If you love and serve people, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Practice makes perfect - the sooner you start, the sooner you will be a happy nonsmoker
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
I do not wish to please him I wish that he should wish to please me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, All summer in the field, and all winter in the study. And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Flowers are the earth laughing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson