Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Neighbors

• If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Quoted in Decatur (Ill.) Daily Republican, 19 May 1882.

• A man complained that on his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbor's. I advised him to buy it, and it would never seem long again.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, Men, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1973). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1847-1848”, p.36, Harvard University Press

• Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honesty, Men, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.430

• We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Men, Jail

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.265, Bantam Classics

• Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Justice, Diversity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert J. Von Frank (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry”, p.8, Harvard University Press

• In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Men, Islands

• The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Neighbor, States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.164, Harvard University Press

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