Ralph Waldo Emerson

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

The more you know, the less you need.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.

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