Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

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

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Travel is a fools paradise.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.