Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment is the treasurer of the one who is wise.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.