Ralph Waldo Emerson

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

The amount of people in this world who are here to do something great far outweighs the rest.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

You will find only what you bring in.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.