Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.

In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self.

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.