Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.

We are all afraid of the truth.

Sometimes people fear the truth. They'd rather not speak to you than know what you really think.

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.

When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.

You don't wanna see your work, because you might find out that you do not like it.

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

The truth. Men will blind themselves with hot irons, rather than face it.

by thus keeping one pace ahead of myself I need never catch up with the truth.

Wizard's Tenth Rule Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.

For nothing is so hard to hear as that which is half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent.

I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so.

For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that I was fooling somebody - I don't know who or what - maybe myself. I have feelings some days where there are scenes with a lot of responsibility, and I'll wish, 'Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman.'

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.

Although I sometimes pose as a fight animal, I'm really a flight animal.

When perfectionism is driving us, shame is riding shotgun and fear is that annoying backseat driver!

My mother always tells me, "Fear isn't from God," and I believe that. But sometimes, I wonder whether I'll be able step into the shoes that God has prepared for me.

Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.