Ralph Waldo Emerson

The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

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.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sun beams and you will always look lovely!

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.