Ralph Waldo Emerson Greatness Quotations

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.

There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,--now under one disguise, now under another,--like a police in citizen's clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.

I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.

The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled upin the skull of Napoleon!

A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic.

Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.

Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side,--the bitter.

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.

The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.

The great make its feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets.

Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.

Great men are sincere.

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.

Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.

A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.

Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. . Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.

Let him be great, and love shall follow him.

There are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even; when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

Every great man is unique.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.

Beauty without expression is boring.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much impression.

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field, the next man will appear.

Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.