Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.