Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct – nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Life too near paralyses art.