Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

Wherever there is power there is age.

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

It is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.