Ralph Waldo Emerson

History a biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.

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

The April winds are magical, And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden-walks are passional To bachelors and dames.

Happiness is just an illusion caused by the temporary absence of reality.

All history is biography.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Always do what you are afraid to do.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

The ornaments of our homes are the friends that visit it.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future world.

Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Its one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.

Concentration is the secret of strength

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

Character is higher than intellect.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well he has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature born halt and blind through luxury of their parents and can only like invalids act on the defensive.

Dont ever give up on something or someone that you cant go a full day without thinking about.

He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

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

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

Everything teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis: therein is human power, in transference, not in creation; & therein is human destiny, not in longevity but in removal. We dive & reappear in new places.

A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather stains of cares

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn

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

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

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

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Life is a progress, and not a station.

Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

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

A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Accuracy is essential to beauty.

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion of well-doing and daring.

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

Men are respectable only as they respect.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century by destroying the weevil or the locust.

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force that thoughts rule the world.

And so of cheerfulness or a good temperthe more it is spent the more of it remains.

The only way to have friends is to be one.

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Our best thoughts come from others.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning not to be measured by the horse power of the understanding.

Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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.

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

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

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

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.

Every burned book enlightens the world.