Ralph Waldo Emerson

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.

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

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

People ignore the thing they have the most power over. I know so many people who will go to a protest and do something big on an issue. But they won’t deal with that issue in their home.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.