Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

What is a farm but a mute gospel?

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.'

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Without electricity, the air would rot.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

There is always safety in valor.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

What you are comes to you.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Life is our dictionary.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Children are all foreigners.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.