Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

It is the amends of a short and troublesome life, that doing good and suffering ill entitles man to a longer and better

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.