Quotes

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.
—"Good-bye"

Make yourself necessary to someone.
—The Conduct of Life, "Considerations by the way"

People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
—Essays, "Circles"

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
Essays, "Friendship"

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.
—Fortune of the Republic

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy.
—Nature

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.
—Nature

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. . . . Build, therefore, your own world.
—Nature

The reward of thing well done, is to have done it.
—Essays, "Nominalist and Realist"

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
—The Conduct of Life

Shallow men believe in luck.
—The Conduct of Life

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight we all quote.
—Letters and Social Aims

The Genius or Destiny of America is . . . a man incessantly advancing, as the shadow on the dial's face, or the heavenly body by whose light it is marked. . . . Let us realize that this country, the last found, is the great charity of God to the human race.
—quoted in The Puritan Origins of the American Self  by Sacvan Bercovitch

We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.
—quoted in The Puritan Origins of the American Self  by Sacvan Bercovitch

about Ralph Waldo Emerson

Like most poets, preachers, and metaphysicians, he burst into conclusions at a spark of evidence.
—Henry Seidel Canby, Classic Americans

. . . that everlasting rejecter of all that is, and seeker for he knows not what. . . .
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

His mission was the liberation of men from chains that were self-forged and self-imposed.
—Granville Hicks, The Great Tradition

I could readily see in Emerson, notwithstanding his merit, a gaping flaw. It was, the insinuation, that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
—Herman Melville

He has what none else has; he does what none else does. He pierces the crust the envelope the secrets of life. He joins on equal terms the few great sages and original seers. He represents the freeman, America, the individual.
—Walt Whitman

Emerson is a critic, poet, philosopher, with talent not so conspicuous, not so adequate to his task; but his field is still higher, his task more arduous. Lives a far more intense life; seeks to realize a divine life; his affections and intellect equally developed. Has advanced farther, and a new heaven opens to him. Love and Friendship, Religion, Poetry, the Holy are familiar to him. The life of an Artist; more variegated, more observing, finer perception; not so robust, elastic; practical enough in his field; faithful, a judge of men. There is no such general critic of men and things, no such trustworthy and faithful man. More of the divine realized in him than in any.
—from Henry David Thoreau's journal

Sources for Quotations

I use various sources for quotations on this site. Below are the most common sources I use. I also draw from my own collection of quotes and from primary sources.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition. John Bartlett, Justin Kaplan, editors. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1992.

BrainyQuote. <http://www.brainyquote.com/>

The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation. Richard Kenin and Justin Wintle, editors. Dorset Press, New York, 1978

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, fourth edition. Angela Partington, editor. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 1992

Peter's Quotations by Laurence J. Peter. Bantam Books, New York, 1980

The Quotations Page. <http://www.quotationspage.com/>