Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

The true poem is the poet’s mind.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?