Ralph Waldo Emerson

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

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?

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions…

Strange – is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

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.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

There is properly no history; only biography.