Ralph Waldo Emerson

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

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.

As the Spanish proverb says, He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.

Friends are thieves of time.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.