Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

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

Children are all foreigners.

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.

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

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

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Without electricity, the air would rot.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

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

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

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

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

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

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

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

All diseases run into one, old age.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Nature hates calculators.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.