Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

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

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

The human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life’s sorrows.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

Important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.