Ralph Waldo Emerson

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Logic is like the sword – those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

The more you know, the less you need.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Children are all foreigners.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.