Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

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

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.