Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.

The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact.

There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.

To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

As to virtue . . . it is an act of the will, a habit which increases the quantity, intensity and quality of life. It builds up, strengthens and vivifies personality.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

Virture offers the only path in this life that leads to tranquility.

Virtue is her own reward.

Do well and right and let the world sink.

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece - by thought, choice, courage, and determination.

Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.

The good refrain from sin from the pure love of virtue.

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

Virtue is not to be considered in the light of mere innocence, or abstaining from harm; but as the exertion of our faculties in doing good.

Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.

A man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license.

Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.

And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.