Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

1803–1882 · Boston, MA

• A great man is always willing to be little.

• Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

• The only reward of virtue, is virtue: the only way to have a friend, is to be one.

• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

• Insist on yourself; never imitate.

• To be great is to be misunderstood.

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

• Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

• There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.