Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Ambition

• Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jobs, Work, Ambition

• Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

• He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Giving Up, Ambition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.472, Harvard University Press

• If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, Business, Fall

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “Basic Selections from Emerson: Essays, Poems & Apothegms”

• We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Nature, Ambition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.20, Penguin

• Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ambition, Pride, Envy

• The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ambition, Eye, Artist

• The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Ambition, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2800, Delphi Classics

• Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Mistake, Ambition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.27, Harvard University Press

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Ambition, Greatness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.140, Penguin

• Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Country, Art

• Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time. This cup which nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call hope, love, ambition, science; especially it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Time, Coffee

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1871). “Society and Solitude and Other Essays”, p.284

• Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, "so hot? my little Sir.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Ambition, Clubs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.151, Penguin

• Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Real, Ambition

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.387, Modern Library

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