Author Name: Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Nature hates calculators.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

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

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

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

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

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

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

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

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

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

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

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

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

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

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

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

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

The first wealth is health.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

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

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

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

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

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

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

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Money often costs too much.

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

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

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

With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

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

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

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt but so are lies.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

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

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

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

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

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

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

All diseases run into one, old age.

Earth laughs in flowers.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

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

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening, only with his legs.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

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

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

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

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

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

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

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Beauty without expression is boring.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

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

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

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

A great man is always willing to be little.

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

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

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

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

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

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

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

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

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

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

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

Our faith comes in moments our vice is habitual.

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

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

With the past, I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.

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

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

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

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

Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

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

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

The first wealth is health.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

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.

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

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

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

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

All mankind love a lover.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Our best thoughts come from others.

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

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

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.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

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

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

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

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

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

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

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.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

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

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.