Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.'

What you are comes to you.

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

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

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

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

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.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

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

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

There is always safety in valor.

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

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

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

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

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

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

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

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

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.