Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Wealth

• Money often costs too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Money, Greatest Wealth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.58, Harvard University Press

• Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Best Love, Money

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.90

• The first wealth is health.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Fitness, Yoga

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.972, Library of America

• There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Men, Ideas

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1963). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.209, Harvard University Press

• A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Creativity, Creative

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1857). “English Traits”, p.178

• It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Skills, Rothschild

• The amount of a man's wealth consists in the number of things he can do without.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Numbers, Wealth

• Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Design

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.365

• People say law but they mean wealth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mean, Law, People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3911, Delphi Classics

• Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Nature, Order

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.361, Рипол Классик

• There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Home, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.241, University of Georgia Press

• Man was born to be rich, or to inevitably grow rich, by the use of his faculties: by the union of thought with nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Use, Unions

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.368

• I thought as I rode in the cold pleasant light of Sunday morning how silent & passive nature offers, every morn, her wealth to man; she is immensely rich, he is welcome to her entire goods, which he speaks no word, only leaves over doors ajar, hall, store room, & cellar. He may do as he will: if he takes her hint & uses her goods, she speaks no word; if he blunders & starves, she says nothing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Morning, Sunday

• Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sacrifice, Love Is, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2499, Delphi Classics

• Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Clothes, Rights

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.470, Modern Library

• Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Clothes, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.184, Library of America

• The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Civilization, People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.51, Harvard University Press

• The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, School, Eye

• The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by theopulent, can be enjoyed by all.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Thinking, Done

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.367

• It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860). “Power, Wealth, Illusions”, p.76

• There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Horse, Apology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.268, Graphic Arts Books

• He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Civilization

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.367

• Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Opportunity, Doors, Self

• Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Inspiration, Intelligent

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Graphic Arts Books

• Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Thoughtful, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1169, Delphi Classics

You May Also Like:

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Margaret Fuller

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville