The Very Quotable Emerson

Title page of an Emerson essay collection illustrated by John Steuart Curry (The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Illustrated Modern Library, 1944).

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave more than a thousand lectures over 40 years, sharing his thoughts with audiences in the hope that they might reflect and learn. As we enter a new year, hopeful of positive changes, it seems like a good time to look back on some of Emerson’s most notable quotations. 

Emerson proposed that one could live best by trusting and acting in accord with one’s own “intuition.” He inspired his listeners to think freshly about the paradoxes and problems of life and society, as well as the pressing issues of their day. His was an American voice: inclusive, outspoken, curious, democratic, tolerant, optimistic, original, and pragmatic. 

The following quotations are selections from some of Emerson’s many lectures and essays. 

From “Nature”:

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

From “Self Reliance”:

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

From Essays, First Series: 

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

From The Conduct of Life:

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

A little integrity is better than any career.

Good criticism is very rare and always precious.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

From “The American Scholar”:

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. 

Fear always springs from ignorance.

— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide