Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

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.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.