Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Opinions

• The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Mistake, Errors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.391, Library of America

• Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Confidence, Dream, Mistake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.206, Harvard University Press

• People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Positive, Attitude, I Hate You

• What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Learning, Greatness, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2017). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.144, Broadview Press

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Graduation, Philosophy

  'Essays' (1841) 'Self-Reliance'

• We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Different Opinions, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.107, Harvard University Press

• I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Senior, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2742, Delphi Classics

• The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Congratulations, Greatness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.401

• ...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Real, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (EasyRead Large Bold Edition)”, p.69, ReadHowYouWant.com

• In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, People, Warning

• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, Cynical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

• The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Forgiveness, Differences, Forgiving

• Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, People, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.82

• How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Honor, Crowds, Today

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1856). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures ...”, p.265

• We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hands, Giving, Opinion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.536, Library of America

• A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Home, Men, Looks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

• Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Age, Reform, Opinion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.16, Graphic Arts Books

• The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Creativity, Two, Creative

• You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Roots, Progress

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.419, Library of America

• Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Greatness, Forever

• I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Learning, Sacrifice

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.69, Penguin

• He in whom the love of truth predominates . . . submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion; but he is a candidate for truth . . . and respects the highest law of his being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Law, Imperfection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.109, Jazzybee Verlag

• Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Im Sorry, Public Opinion, I Am Sorry

• Every reform was once a private opinion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reform, Opinion, Catchy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.16, Graphic Arts Books

• Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Esteem, Character, Simple

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville