Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

A vow is a snare for sin.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.