Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is related to all nature.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.