Q0263

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson
School Transcendentalism
Source Compensation
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Compensation, within the tradition of Transcendentalism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Ralph Waldo Emerson. (n.d.). Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0263

MLA: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0263.

Chicago: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0263.

Same thinker

More from Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
  2. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
  3. To be great is to be misunderstood.
  4. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
  5. For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

All quotations by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme