Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.

Virtue is an inner strength. It expands your nature.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Even in decline, a virtuous man increases the beauty of his behavior. A burning stick, though turned to the ground, has its flame drawn upwards.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

It's obviously a lot harder to try and be a good guy than it is to be a bad guy. The world is a fundamentally evil place, it seems like. So in order to be a good person, you have to fight temptation and vice.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.

Good will always prevail over evil. I see that in me versus Klitschko.

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities

Courage is the most important of the virtues because it is the one that makes all the others possible.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.