Ralph Waldo Emerson

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

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.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse; the flowering branches are; some long, some short.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

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.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.