Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

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

Be an opener of doors.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.