Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand — relax!

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

Are you using your pain as an excuse or as a source of strength?

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.