Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money often costs too much.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature.

The dice of God are always loaded.

Live, let live, and help live

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Practice makes perfect, and nobody’s perfect, so why practice?

The first wealth is health.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

Think with your whole body.

There is nothing assured to mortals.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

We have more than we use.